I hope someone makes wall-mount mini gold refineries soon. You chuck in your old mobile phones, computer gear, company watch, stolen jewellery, teeth of your vanquished foes etc, into a nice mercury bath. Then the machine does a nice agitate cycle, boils the Hg off (or whatever, something about arsenic/cynanide) and spits out your reclaimed gold in handy billets. It would be, like, a bullion times cooler than Mobile Muster, where they ask you to just fork over your old tech booty for nought. The fumes from the mini-refineries would be pretty bad though....

Pop Nerd Quiz:how many gold mullions are in a billion bullions?

Your points are all sound. I concur that the 'no max yield' call is outrageous abuse of language and scientific charlatanism. Akin to "continous improvement".

Positive feed back loops that lead to bio-accumulation(sic) are still cool though. (like the pacific island mentioned that is now collecting water and sun and birdshite much faster that 20 years ago....)

It sounds like you want to engage your kid with something universally appealling - colour and movement -
Any tuff tech would do... an old portable phone, a torch, an LED bike light. If you are really keen you could make a box with some on/off switches and some lights that go on and off.
Remember, this is mostly about you, and your child is responding you what you are giving attention to (your laptop) and if you give attention to other stuff they will follow that too.
Don't be embarrased to admit child raising is (partly) selfish activity.

I think (and am not claiming to be an expert) essentially the concept is that if you create positive localised ecological feedback loops that allow bio-accumulation from sun, animal action, and remove/harvest less than the rate of accumulation (as harvest or yield)) then the whole system can increase with no THEORETICAL limit. but of course there are practical limits like oxygen diffusion, heat penetration, soil slippage etc. also the theory assumes a small finite 'open' system that is not lossy. eg, if you only eat from your garden, and all your compost, human waste, etc goes back to the garden and you encourage material to accumulate in a way that does not cost you more energy than it is 'worth', your garden yield will get better and better.

And the first recorded modern practice of permaculture as a systematic method was by Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer in the 1960s.
PermacultureEssentially one designs systems that run using existing natural ecologies using paths of least resistance and capturing energy/matter.
Interestingly enough natural agriculture systems designed using these principle have no theoretical maximum yield.

The list, by cause does not mention virus, trojan, hacking or any thing similar as a cause for an airline crash, although it reads like a contributing factor in the article, rather than a primary cause.

(Damn pilot error.... how long till the AI's can fly planes? oh wait, they can).

This is cool, I love that the science fiction future is so present in our world right now, and the power of 'it is possible, so we did it this way' I am quite amused by the quote" You don’t have to join too many dots for potential misuse." and I look forward to outrageous innovative uses by paparazzi, peeping toms, pervs, police, pyromaniacs, pilferers, pidgeon racers......

Everything was going swimmingly until he got hooked, line and sinker by the police who smelt something fishy. I wonder if he was acting on behalf of Sid The Squida thieving octopus who was released early last year from NZ.

I am very happy, there are now two parties that are talking sense in OZ, and the leader of Labour is not to bad either, I can but hope we move forward at the next election... in the meantime, it is fun and commendable to join the cheefrul political bashing of Abbot: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/bible-bashing-the-homeless-abbott-style-20100215-o2tj.html http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/no-more-dole-tony-abbott-warns-the-under-30s/story-e6frfmd9-1225856181945 http://www.samesame.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=14437 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSPc5UTcwHQ What an embarrasing tool!