Operating at 130 deg on the hot side it produces 0.5 W/m^2. If we wreap a 3 feet by 3 feet section of it around the exhaust pipe, it would give us 0.5 Watts. I am not sure, even the old thermocouples might generate this kind of power.

Even if the user knows it is a fake warning, and even if the user knows it is the site that has been hacked, if Safari will not let the user close the page and move on, it is broken. It should be fixed. Does Safari always restore the old sessions without allowing the user a chance to start fresh sessions? If not it is broken.

I did not know USA is under a rock, because that is where I am living and said so too. ;-)

Some background about my "invention". Back in 1983 I was practicing for my GRE using Barron's guide. There one of the reading comprehension passages were about how mosquitoes find their hosts. About vapor trails and C02 trails and temperature sensitivities etc. That passage triggered a train of thought and was mulling over designing a mosquito trap as a B Tech project. But went with a much more prosaic wind mill. Did some drawings of it for the Masters project, but as fate would have it, I did the project on a very run-of-the-mill, regular, very much inside the box, in fact close to the centroid of the box, subject.

I don't know how old these commercial systems being sold are. I am sure many more people, more knowledgeable than me thought about it, and some of them definitely actually did something, other than merely fantasizing about it.

I always thought of inventing a mosquito trap using some sort of machine. It should have a device that will emit the attractant chemicals, sweat/co2/stinky cheese chem/etc, using a mild heater. It will have a tube through which the mosquitoes will approach the source. There will be a small chamber to hold the trapped mosquitoes, which will be a lower pressure than atmosphere. When the mosquito passes through the tube, a trap door will open, sucking the mosquito into the negative pressure chamber. Never got around to it. Found a better solution, emigrated to the USA ;-)

Repeatedly trying to kill them using stronger and stronger chemicals would lead to resistance in surviving population. We should fight them by enlisting evolution on our side. One can try is to capture and sterilize the males and release them in very large quantities in regions with endemic mosquito problem. It would take a few years to make a dent. But these sterile males will compete with, and reduce the mating opportunities of, fertile natural born males.

Let us start all over again. The thread started with the statement: " but in the last 80 years or so, a 'telegram' doesn't / didn't mean 'morse code.' ". The entire concept of PC is about 30 years old. (IBM PC - 1981). PCs did not get network support in USA till about 1990s. Saying "BSNL website says it switched to networked PCs to support telegrams, long ago. This shows Morse code has not been used for 80 years" is wrong.

When was Morse code discontinued in India for telegrams? Once telephone networks became widespread, most county (or taluq in Indian parlance) level post offices started using telephone to replace Morse code. Still the same message passing network. But instead of Morse code the operators would call the upstream or downstream node and speak the messages on phone. But for villages (branch post office) the connection to their upstream node (sub post office) was usually through telegraph and Morse code. Cheap equipment and ultra reliability were its strength. If monsoon rains wash away a stretch of telegraph poles, these branch masters would simply cross the river/run/brook/rill/nallah/arroyo/stream/creek/whatever, grab the severed wire with a piece of cloth, usually their turban or waist cloth, touch it to the metal pole and start sending and receiving messages!. I vaguely recall my dad talking about the telephone replacing telegraph while he was still in service. May be in the late 1980s. Sections of Indian telegraph network were on Morse code almost till the day they all went out of service.

Oh, yeah. Forgotten the Sumerians. Their cuneiform tablets are older than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Bonus aside: Cartoon of an archaeologist in an excavation pit shouting to another one standing above the rim: "This must be their government office, everything here is in triplicate".

BSNL is very very recent. It was established in just 2000. The Indian Posts & Telegraph Department dates back to days of British Raj. I still remember by sixth grade Indian History. Emperor Sher Shah Suri (1540) introduced mail service based on horses to India. Take look at the history of the post office in India: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Postal_Service

Recorded history begins with Egyptians because they were the first ones to record history in an enduring medium still readable after 5000 years. Chinese might have recorded history but it was probably lost. Indians don't have the habit of recording much. Most of Indian history comes from the records of Greeks Chinese or fragmentary stone inscriptions on temples and carved pillars.

But before recorded history we have some reconstructed history from artifacts. Tracing the histories of domesticated plants and animals also give us some insight into earlier histories. Then there is genetic and DNA research. As our technology improves we get greater insights and better reconstructed history. For example, now we can now answer when we started wearing clothes. http://scienceandreason2.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/when-did-humans-start-wearing-clothes/

So we are not simply going to say it started with the Egyptians. We will say it started with the Africans.

Probably in USA. In India regular dot-dash telegraph was operational well into the 1970s. I have visited post offices with my dad and been "shocked" by the telegraph equipment. There key-hammer instruments were not insulated and if you touch it you will get a shock. The voltage is not as high 110V but high enough to feel the tingling and make muscles twitch but not painful. I don't know the actual voltage used. I remember the telex machines being introduced to state capitals in 1970s. I have seen the telegrams telegrams written by the hand of the operator in pencil. Telex messages will have lines and line of tape cut and paste literally on to the same form.

Combined hand is the term used by Indian Posts & Telegraph Department to describe postal workers certified in morse code. He got his certificate in Chennai in 1957 or so. Most common telegraph traffic was rural merchants exchanging price information and harvest forecasts with district and state commercial centers. Usually in the evening and usually obfuscated in terms unique to each trading family.

But out side business most common people got telegrams bearing death notices. India is a very hot country and usually bodies are cremated within 24 hours. Certain religious ritual need a certain relatives to be present at the cremation. Usually the wife's family (whether the husband dies or the wife) plays an important roles in the rites and the property settlements that follows soon after. Husband's brothers would usually be in the same village, but again sometimes they need to be sent for. Sons/daughters also need to be sent out for urgently. It is not uncommon to actually send messengers out for very important relatives. So for most common people only death notices are important enough to use the expensive, so many rupees per word, messages.

Middle class folks would also send congratulatory telegrams for weddings they could not attend. The custom again requires certain relatives must be present for weddings, but if they could not be, spending money to send telegrams carries the subtext, "sorry I could not attend, see I am spending expensive telegram, so it shows that I value the relationship a lot, I beg forgiveness for being able to attend". I have heard of people sending double telegrams.

In a PGWodehouse novel Betram Wooster and his aunt Dhalia exchange some 10 telegrams or so in one afternoon. I found that to be a lot more hilarious than most other people because my prior notions about what a telegram signifies.

Once the commercial messages went to SMS basically the market disappeared for telegrams.

They have very limited user interface. Have you browsed for netflix title via Roku? And they all have very limited browser.Chromebook has local storage 320GB. More importantly I can run Apache in my home network and serve movies and photos from other machines. And I disconnect take it with me while traveling.

It is basically a iPad minus all the sexy touch screen things. Built on solid reliable technology using well understood tested input devices and formats. And more open too. No wonder it is growing. I am actually thinking of getting a second and a bluetooth keyboard+thumbwheel to serve as the streaming device for the home theater. It has HDMI out and works with Amazon videos, Netflix.

My relative who works for Microsoft and she and her husband use the company gym. They say they routinely run into Steve Ballmer working out. No fuss, no special privileges or anything. Quite polite apparently. So under all those layers of caricatures and perceptions there could be a nice guy hidden somewhere.

But if he a great salesman but has not made any great products, but still continues to make great sales, what does it make him? A con man? The Great Snake Oil salesman?

They also say nice things about Bill Gates as a person. Apparently his assistants contested the property tax assessment from the city and Bill ordered it be withdrawn and paid the assessed tax quietly without fuss. Also both Bill and Melinda were very nice and polite to the parents of playmates and friends of their children.

Sorry no citations.

The way most official secrets acts are written, it has some boilerplate language with a whole bunch of "whereas" and "notwithstandings" and eventually boil down to making it a crime to access government secrets, no matter how trivial or non-existent the protections were nor how clueless and braindead the officials were. Usually it has no due-diligence requirements on the part of the government to protect the secret data. It is usually a crime to look at what the government considers secret even if it was done accidentally, inadvertently.

Laws are actually drafted by government officials and they insert enough language to protect their tails.

You are redeploying the weapons developed by the industry for the climate change discussions very well. These are great poll tested gems developed by the best minds in the advertising industry designed to put the other side on the defensive while claiming the mantle of being "reasonable and prudent". I will expect you friends to complete advance on the other fronts.

Well played. Democracies stand no chance against well funded misinformation campaigns using the very best mass psychology.

So the score is Democracy: 0, Special Interests 1, nah, make it infinity.