A few folks have alluded to Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" reg. lobbing asteroids at earth.

I think a more interesting/pertinent reference is to Delos Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"

No short term or medium term ROI for sure. And until commodity prices skyrocket on earth, not enough ROI to ship down to earth under any circumstances.

But the cost of shipping large masses from earth to moon is huge, so they can probably compete in the lunar market vs. resources shipped up from earth. Same for anything further out like Mars, etc. Of course, right now, there is no lunar market to speak of.

Another ROI could be acquisition of mineral rights in the asteroid belt. Buy them now and sell them high once there actually is a viable market. But to acquire the mineral rights they probably have to demonstrate at least a rudimentary capability to actually extract something from the minerals.

So bottom line is that an ROI is not impossible, but this is about as speculative as it gets. It's not just about a technological breakthrough revolutionizing an existing market, it's about multiple technological breakthroughs required to create a market that doesn't even exist yet.

I think that's part of their real business model here. They aren't going to make money shipping asteroid materials down to earth. Their best sources of revenue are either 1) acquiring vast swathes of asteroid mineral rights cheap and then selling them on markup once the technology matures and 2) becoming the prime supplier for any lunar base that gets built. the one area where they can compete on cost is the cost of lifting mass quantities UP earth's gravity well vs. the cost of lobbing mass quantities DOWN the sun's/moon's gravity well.

"...lost significant portions of its outer skin..."
So were the forces involved higher than expected in the design, or was this a manufacturing defect? Seems like the key question is "why did the skin peel off", not "why did it lose stability".

If we figure google gets about 1/2 billion searches per day world-wide and each search conservatively takes about 5 seconds to type in and view results, we get a global savings of nearly 2,300 kW-h per day. Typical US household usage is on the order of 1000 - 2000 kW-h per month, so this is enough energy to power about 50 US homes and nearly double that number of homes in more conservation-oriented places like Europe. I would consider this number to be on the low end of the actual global power savings, as some sources show google serving 3 billion searches per day (http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-serve-worldwide-every-day) , and the watts used will be 5x higher for CRTs.

In the grand scheme of world wide energy usage, this is an insignificant amount, but on the other hand, the effort required to make the switch from white to black background is pretty low compared to other energy-saving efforts, too. What's the saying? "Once you go black, you never go back." Check out HP's corporate site (hp.com) for a sample of how this might look.
( 3.3w*5s/search*500*(10^6) search per day = 16.5*500*(10^6) watt-seconds= 8.25 (10^6) kW-s=2,292 kW-Hours)

I think you may be confusing (or at least conflating) non-compete with non-disclosure...

Actually yes, he is naive. From the pitcher's point of view they can't tell the con-man from the legit, honest programmer. They can't just reveal the family jewels without some assurance. Plus, considering how so many of the industry giants got to be industry giants, it's a legitimate fear.

But in general, the guys that an entrepreneur needs to sign the NDA and the no-compete with are the money guys more than the tech guys. They're the ones who have the real ability to take your idea, run somewhere else with it, AND hire that freelance programmer that is ambivalent about the NDA.

From a programmer's point of view, I'm OK with a limited term NDA.

Yeah, where have these guys been since XP first came out? The security nightmare of XP has been going on for years, simply because it makes it too easy for users to make stupid decisions about securing their system.

At which point they will just close your plant and move production to China, Mexico, or whereever costs are the "cheapest" at that time.

Yes, it's a generalization. Generalizations only have to satisfy the 80-20 rule. I'm sure there are a few people out there or even a sizeable minority who do their best to be secure but don't have the time or budget to upgrade. But an OEM disk of Windows 7 Home premium is under $100. The XP users who are security conscious have probably spent more on anti-virus and security software over the past few years since Win 7 came out than they would spend on an updated OS. Penny-wise and pound foolish?

"Why not liberate the source?"

Maybe because there is XP code still in Vista and later versions?
Maybe because it would just encourage the people who are still using XP to continue using the "Open Source" version?

Anyone still running XP at this point probably hasn't been patching the OS anyway. Not to mention using an admin account as their primary login ID. Not to mention the parts of the XP architecture that make it more vulnerable even if it IS fully patched.

The XP security nightmare began in 2002. A few remaining machines left in 2 years won't make the problem any worse.

Yes, every system has a way to game it. Under your scheme probably nothing would get into the queue at all because each party would be trying to be the one to get the last amendment in before it was frozen. Once that last poison pill gets in, it could be forced into the queue and screw the opposition completely..

I suppose there's a chance the parties would eventually collaborate on necessary legislation like the budget and taxes, but that cooperation would probably be of the "I'll vote for the bridge to nowhere in your district if you vote to open a new military base in mine." type.

Even if the computer belongs to the school, student has a case. Schools provide computers to students who can't afford their own, or perhaps to ensure that only standardized computers can access the school network. But unless a student can afford their own computer that means their online speech is completely limited by the school's policies because the school computer is the only one they have. So by its policies the school is creating a system where only the wealthy and middle class have freedom of speech online, while the poor do not.

for a glow-in-the-dark refrigerator now?

It sounds like it violates the 2nd and 3rd laws of thermodynamics if not the first.