This is amazing. This article doesn't give enough credit to what you have done. This is unbelievable - There is no question that you are a genius - but I also really admire your patience - I cannot believe the amount of frustrating debugging that you would have to go through for this.

I am a low level entrepreneur/inventor myself - and while I have nowhere near the intelligence and patience that you posses, I do have enough experience in this area to appreciate this. Study hard and become a great - you have the capability - just focus it enough.

It need not melt in the 40-50 minutes as you suggest. When the tsunami came only the diesel generators failed. The battery backup was still working. Only when the batteries wound down was the effect of the tsunami felt - i.e. generators were offline. So, there was ample time for the meltdown due to structural damage to occur.

I am not sure about your other points - only pointing out that the timeline need not be as stringent as you were mentioning.

Actually, I was calculating momentum - not energy ratio - if you check the result of calculations I had mentioned (100 M to 10 M kms distance). But, I agree that my post was misleading since I mentioned energy ratio and not momentum specifically.

Also, for dino-killer I dont think any impact option is feasible at all - other than the hovering spacecraft idea. But the probability of dino killer is pretty low, compared to the 100m asteroid. So, I was considering for moderate asteroid impacts (torino scale - 8/9).

I was just wondering whether it is possible for such impacts?

Talking about asteroid impacts, this is just a question which had popped up in my head. Just thought this will be the best place to get the answer –
I am not an astronomer. So my question below might contain a lot of factual errors and foolishness. But I had this doubt for a long time, which I wanted to solve.

For avoiding asteroid impact – is the following method thought out and discarded?

Keep a pretty big satellite circling (or nearby) the earth. Make it the fastest man made object – if possible even faster than Solar Probe + , by using gravity assists. Now, suppose we find that an asteroid is going to hit the earth, get this satellite to impact the asteroid and nudge it out of position so that it doesnt hit earth.

The advantage of this option is:
1. The satellite is always on standby – so if it is required, we can use it in a short notice (1 year range)
2. The more the time we have – i.e. if the asteroid is going to hit us in say 50 years, more slingshot runs we could do and due to gravity assists so that we can increase the speed to a very huge value
3. The faster it is, the less mass it need be – say a satellite weighing 10 ton and say moving at 200 km/s should be able to nudge a moderate size asteroid –
Comparison:
Asteroid Diameter: 100 m
Asteroid size: approx 10^6 ton – speed 10 km/s
Satellite: size: approx 10 ton – speed 200 km/s
Energy ratio ~= 250 : 1
If, say, we find the asteroid when it is at around 100 Million kms from earth (at least 6 months prior to collision)
This looks good enough to nudge the asteroid enough to avoid collision – from my non-scientific viewpoint. Am I completely wrong here?
Since we usually find asteroids in such time and distances, what are the pitfalls here?

In that case, they can use Youtube videos for this, right? Their automatic translation is quite horrible - they could use the good/bad check there too.
Actually they can translate the same videos everytime people sees it - and until quite a high percentage of people say yes, they can test it again.
Also, when they have more than 200 Million videos in youtube, why do they need to store data from Google Voice - which is much more personal and important.

If it is over water, it will make a big splash.
If it is over land, it will make a crumbling sound.
It might completely fail - but it will not cause radioactive contamination of the surrounding area for the next year or more.
It will not cause cancer in the surrounding cities (including tokyo) just because wind blew wrong.

I was a neutral on the nuclear energy till two days back - now, I am having a rethink - it is far too dangerous for the advantages it offers.

I guess you are using nominally - as - existing on name only - right?

From this sentence, I take it that you have never been to India - and dont even really know about it. There are many negatives for India, but being non-democratic is not one of them.

Democracy is the most important thing in our collective psyche. And when people kick your country down on the biggest thing it believes, due to their ignorance - it really really feels bad.

No - this is a basic testcase for any login scenario - the person who is at fault is the tester

Whoever who could have done anything against the US gov using these applications would already have done this by now. People are talking about proxies etc - can they proxy to a different country?
All they are doing now is to provide these tools to the Iranian citizens - which is a good thing.

IANAE, but it looks like an issue with the basic concept of stocks. Stocks are a nice way for a small company to get external funding and grow, but once it breaches the small company size and the companies growth decreases in speed, then short term benefits override long term benefits for the share holder.

For smaller companies, the money put in by the investor grows in multiples within few years - so the investor is wary of doing anything that can jeopardize the future of the company - since the profit margins are unattainable through other methods. For bigger companies, the company might grow 20% or so per year - so people who make the decisions (big investors) - has multiple options, and so try to maximize the profit even if messes up the company. Even the company tanks after 5 years of higher profit, they can use the money to put in any other big company giving the same level of profit, and totally they have higher returns overall.

Even dividends I dont think helps much in this case, since it is just percentage of the profit. So, unless a completely new concept comes which can avoid this problem, this issue is going to be there.

I would also like to thank you for the very helpful and supportive comments till now. You were extremely helpful and I am quite grateful for the same.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. This has been a hugely supportive and helpful discussion. I am really thankful to MartinShou, Yourself, mutube, Hairy1 and everyone else too.

I had lost a lot of confidence during the whole thing, and was quite hard on myself, since I did not persevere. But yes, it could be just that without a business partner, it is easy to quit.

Thank you all again.

Please dont take it in a negative way. I am very happy that I did start on it, but what I am sad about is that it did not pan out, and because in my opinion I did not try enough.

I agree to all your points (esp since otherwise, I will be branded an idiot :-) ), but all said and done, some days and nights, I do feel very sad that I did not go ahead with it.

There is a lot of knowledge gained from it, I have become much more competent programmer because of it, I appreciate my family more because of it, I got more time to play with my kid etc. But there are downsides too, which we should accept too along with the positives.

I am still happily married - so the regret is not about that.

The regret is due to the following reasons:

1. I started the company hoping that I will be able to be financially secure after a while. That did not pan out, and I am in the same state financially as I was before I started the company.

I have many other ideas too. I thought I will try out the most financially lucrative one, get enough money to be safe for the rest of the life, and then try out my other ideas. That is not going to happen anytime soon.

2. The realization that I quit on something. I did not try enough during the sales part. I could have persevered and then if I fail, I can accept. I myself know that I did not try anywhere near hard enough during the marketing/sales part.

It is very hard if you know you quit before you acted with your full energy on it. I did not do that, and so it is quite a big regret.

3. I now know that it requires perseverance. I did not know to what level - at that time. I lacked it then, and I am not sure whether I lack it even now. Unless you jump in there, you really do not know how deep you are.

So my confidence also has taken a hit.

Even though I tried a little bit, I am still in the same position as before. That does hurt, especially when you know it is only your fault.

Amen to that, brother.

I started my own company. The idea was good, and I had confidence in myself to create the program by myself.
I left my job and started out on my own. My wife (and my 2 year old too) was also full supportive.

I completed the coding and testing part. It took me close to a year, but I finished it.
It works great, everybody who saw the program (including one MNC), said it is very well done.

After that it came to marketing and sales.
I went to an MNC where I previously worked. They said they are interested and pulled me around for 4 months before they stopped answering my calls.
And by then - after 1 year - I got tired and lost my will.

I started fighting with my wife everyday for very small reasons. Pressure from parents/relatives/friends etc to look for a job etc. Not from my wife though.

I relented, and I joined a startup - actually I went there to sell my product, and they were very impressed and asked me to join them.
It has been a year now. I have a fully done product with me. I have not gone to sell it to more than 3 clients.

It is something I regret, and regret a lot. But I now understand, with experience, that starting a business is not about coding or even having the idea.
It is about perseverance and patience. Which I sorely lacked.