*facepalm*

It really has been a long time since I've posted to Slashdot! Thanks.

I had all these lovely blank lines delineating my paragraphs, l wonder what happened to them...

Assuming that mind transfers were easy to enough to be in our grasp, of course. After all, can you imagine how valuable it would be to an organism's offspring if the parent were able to simply transfer all its experience,into it? Not having already evolved it isn't really a convincing argument,but it's worth a thought. Then again, there is instinct which, while for more primitive and less flexible than Knowledge (as well as in most cases relying heavily on complimentary learned experience to function, contrary to popular belief), does have similar aspects. Perhaps its actually less helpful (in the long run) to do a total transfer than it is to have a mix of "relearning" and certain forms of passed knowledge like an instinct. This reminds me of a rambling bit of philosophy I recently read in a Sci-fi novel. In discussing why apparent aliens had briefly stopped on Earth before continuing on without ever making contact with anyone, the idea was considered that perhaps what we consider intelligence is infact a primitive evolution of an instinct; inefficient, prone to error but still successful. Perhaps the alien's had a more refined instinct and no longer had need of the excess of culture and irrelevant communications that ours seemingly needs. That they had no need or even ability to communicate socially and contact us.

Forget the garden, I'll settle for a cheap, effective automated lawnmower! Currently, they're all high-priced for cutting dozens or hundreds of acres. Yet, most of them still can't tell when they're about to run over a poor baby rabbit...

"I don't get it, almost all his passwords should be Shift+v! Why isn't this working?"

"Read out says CTRL+v, boss."

"Don't be stupid! It has to be Shift!"

Aw, yeah! You've done it again, Slashdot! Thanks, I've been putting off finding a decent iGoogle replacement. This will do quite nicely. Kind of wish I could find out more about the company behind it, though... Not quite ready to trust them enough to log in to gmail through their widget.

That's all well and good until you're given a notice that they will be shutting down the automated driving service because they have Google Taxi now.

"Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live. But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt's 3rd Inaugural address.

Regardless of whether this was the NSA strong-arming or a coincidental, legal FBI investigation, this is very troubling. How long will we let these government agencies do such harm to US IT businesses both big and small, let alone the very rights of its people? Every new instance bring seemingly irreparable harm to all three.

On the other hand, this report does smell suspiciously of a man trying to scare-up legal funds by capitalizing on current events. Does any one else get a weird John Galt vibe from this guy? Yet, it's clear that something very serious has happened here. I don't know what to think of the whole matter...

Yep. Use it all the time.

I've heard good things about SpiderOak. Can't say that I've ever used it myself, though.

Suddenly, I don't feel like the FBI agent from this slashdot article was just exaggerating claims to drum up interest for in a book he wanted to release....

Funny, I couldn't help but wonder if it might have been caused by someone upset about the recent attempts at new gun control legislation by Congress. I can only hope everybody keeps a level head, regardless of what or who it turns out to be.

3 years? Lucky!

Now if you'll excuse me, this thing won't shovel coal into own hopper. Gotta keep its boiler goin' 'til its saved my spreadsheet!

Tiny compared to most things on day-to-day human scales. Here's an image of the pellet.

As for the reaction itself (and I probably have this wrong, so please correct me if you discover so) it would, best-case, generate 100-150 MJ, but I read the target chamber's design only allows for 45 MJ (realistic expectations, I suppose?) That amounts to 11 kg of TNT (yes this is all paraphrased from Wikipedia.) Certainly tiny by the standards of fusion/fission, but quite huge considering the pellet above.

This might not seem like much, but it is a demonstrative design. Going for designs that would produce a practical commercial system at appreciable outputs would have been astronomically more expensive. Better to prove the concept first. Still more, this is a dual purpose facility; it's primary objective is stockpile stewardship. The potential for fusion research for commercial purposes is just added value.

So, when do the new T-shirts come out?