And yet you have farm, home, and cottage owners living near the shore of Lake Manitoba in the province of Manitoba screaming about the lake getting too much water from the Portage Diversion due to all the recent flooding.

If all the excess flood water could be piped South to thirsty states every spring that would likely make more than just the Lake Manitoba residents happy. Heck, the capital of Winnipeg has a floodway designed to prevent the city from becoming the center of a lake (check out a satellite image south of the city 1997)

I wonder if the scientists who go out there will bring along some drones to check out that monster hole and display some mad drone skillz. It would be neat if they did it similar to how some engineers used a drone to check out a Corevette car museum that got noshed upon by a sinkhole.

To be clearer: if a temperature difference can start the power generation in a humid area, can the power generated be enough to power an air conditioner to cool down enough air to extend the duration of the water condensation when the metal gets too warm and needs to be cooled? I doubt that it would allow perpetual water production but would the extra cooling allow it to extend the condensation process and power generation any significant degree?

Power and water to produce... more power and water? Hmm... I wonder how much this could scale up

Depends on how flexible the world-controlling engine code is in relation to the content of the actual game world. I once imagined something like this and as long as enough work is placed on the fundamental mechanics of inter-server operation then I can see it as doable.

Basically they need to have a set of rules with enough variables that can allow for the individual server environment to change sufficiently enough to make the different worlds interesting while still retaining a 'core' code that can handle the transition well for networking to different servers. Like say the effect a wizard using a wand to casting a 'Flamethrower' spell also being able to work with a steampunk 'flamethrower' or a sci-fi flamethrower. For world/quest building it would be great if they had simple rules/tools with the possibility of becoming something enormously complex like a game of Go.

World building tools that allowed player add-ons while preserving connectivity could create an enormous amount of player game support like the way Crafthub does with Minecraft for example. It would take a lot of planning to avoid the 'need this add-on, and this add-on, and this add-on' to play though. A game engine that allowed add-ons to modify the environment while not breaking compatibility between versions would be very nice but would require some very heavy thought to create..

I actually downloaded Unity last night to try playing around with something like that before I saw this article and said 'huh. Great minds.'

Not so easy, no.

I remember a LPMud server I played on where players undertook quests to get a certain number of Quest Points and those who got high enough were allowed to get access to the LPMud code. New coders would create areas and/or quests for higher ranking coders to vet and if good would include these areas/quests for regular players to play.

LPMud code is basically object-oriented C code and was usually simple enough for a higher level coder to visually scan for problems/exploits.The better and more respected you were with the admins the more access you had to the code to do more than just quests. New character classes with unique abilities like the old Necromancer class on 3K (http://www.3k.org/about3k.php and still around!) that allowed you to pre-script in directions for a kind of 'super speed' become possible..Get high enough and you could get access for the basic server code itself.

Oh, I agree. Sadly, more than a few people don't bother to spend more than one minute reading manuals or checking for possible maintenance issues. Add ethanol and higher efficiencies (making engines more sensitive to gas issues) to the mix and it just gets worse. Preferably they should follow your advice but ways to reduce the problem couldn't hurt.

I know that lawn mowers, should you leave gas in them for a while, will gain a 'coating' that gums up the fuel needle in the carburetor. Cleaning out the carb is a true pain and costs a lot to get a mechanic to clean/replace. Would this kind of coating over that small and delicate part help ease/eliminate sticking?

Process patent, huh? Here's another one...

Scanner = Toilet
Network = Sewer

Thus, one patents the process of inputting waste into the Toilet device and sending it outside via the interconnected Sewer.
All those who give a $h!t are therefore legal targets!

So instead of working towards an Internet that blends everything together in a rich, international and multicultural mosaic they wish to deny everything in areas where a select, privileged few rule, creating a blander Internet that caters to their dogma. Nice way to block other people's viewpoints and thus create greater cultural, religious, and political misunderstandings.

Kings of the hill, indeed.

Canpire = Canadian Vampire. Sucking on the blood of the flow of the Internet.

Wonder if sunlight (exposure) will turn them to ash too....?

Patent oxygen chemical reactions, tell all the patent lawyers that breathing is no longer 'free', and quote this guy when you tell them. Fun times!

If you make it can you break it? IE. If you can 'make' energy this way then can you 'unmake' it?

I'm waiting for some TV series or movie that use patent trolls as the vector for an evil alien race, who regenerate and can only be killed with fire, seeking to stall human progress.

Has someone already done so yet? Please?

Woot! Another step towards improving the human immune system. Something like this sounds oddly similar to something I said last October:

"It would be nice if one could program the current immune system with a broad range identifier would eliminate all but the rarest of virus infections. Then the next step would be to somehow analyze foreign invaders to give scientists advance warning. Then a way to create fixes automatically. David Weber gave a shot at imagining something like that but with alien tech implants and nanotech in his Troy series. Some DNA rewriting in the first book as well. How accurate he was I leave to you."

The 'way to create fixes automatically' part would fit in well with this article. Now they just need a detection method, a way to communicate to the human host, and something to link it all together. Whee!