Serious answer. An optical fiber is only transparent for a limited range of colors. As soon as you modulate a single color (monochromatic laser beam) the resulting light beam is by definition no longer monochromatic. Here's a fun, beginner oriented book on the topic.

You have chosen to measure life in terms of personal dollars; nothing I write is going to change that. But I have a different perspective. A revolutionary jet engine would be fantastic. It goes way beyond corporate profit. A better engine contributes to air travel; making it faster or safer or more accessible. Something to be very proud of.

This is an age old issue. For example during the Dutch Tulip Bubble in the 1600's people were pissed off that too much energy and wealth was wasted in the hands of (parastic / useless / unproductive) tulip speculators. I'm also an MIT engineering graduate, around the time of the first dotcom bubble. Some of my talented technical friends spent their precious time chasing dollars, which at the time meant selling knicknacks over the internet. Others stuck with engineering and did just fine, including the aero-astro folks. If you are facing this decision, think long and hard what is really important. We are only on this planet for a short number of years, spend it wisely.

Use Advanced Search and restrict to Full view only. Here is a scan from the New York Public Library. Speaking of popular fads, there's also a version for people with 3D glasses

I've raced for about 20 years in cross country skiing (starting with high school, then at the NCAA level in college, and now in citizen races) and have probably entered well over 100 events. More importantly I've known a lot of racers over the years. I've never, ever heard of knee damage being a common problem for cross country skiers. In fact, cross country skiing is one of the more gentle sports on joints, especially compared to long distance running which has a lot of pounding. There are tons of old people (70+) competing in citizen races, and they are often quite fast. Even the skating technique is not so troublesome, although it is a little more wearing than diagonal stride over very long distances. Are you thinking of something in particular that causes knee damage?

If Google wants to be really clever, they could make sure there is support for scanning in the exact same specification. Historically there has been a huge imbalance between paper sources (printers) and paper sinks (scanners), so it's no surprise that ideas like the paperless office never took off. However, in the last five years, fantastic scanning equipment has reached consumer availability; for example the Fujitsu Scanscap S1500 has an automated document feeder and has dual sensor bars, which allows duplex scanning without weird paper paths and associated jams. It works great for evaporating large piles of random paper from financial documents to old notes from school to obscure manuals for equipment. Hopefully Google will step up to the plate, make Scanning a first class citizen of this initiative, and finally fix the historical imbalance. This will - quite literally - have tons of impact on people's lives. I care enough that I'm willing to help make it happen.

Thumbs up from this electrical engineer. Here's a portion of the Amazon description:

It may be the only "introduction to electronics books" with back cover comments by Dave Barry, Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler, and George Garrett, as well as recomendations from Robert Hazen, Bob Mostafapour, Dr. Roger Young, Dr. Wayne Green, Scott Rundle, Brian Battles, Michelle Guido, Herb Reichert and Emil Venere. As Monitoring Times said, "Perhaps the best electronics book ever. If you'd like to learn about basic electronics but haven't been able to pull it off, get There Are No Electrons. Just trust us. Get the book."

Use your favorite text editor (like vi or emacs) and share a terminal using GNU screen in multi-user mode.