I like the big picture. And with GenIV reactors that breed up nuclear waste as fuel, it wouldn't take too big a payload to fuel up the place and have multiple reactors to keep the station fully powered. On a moonbase a blackout means death.

I agree! It really is creepy — and limited. It looks like the toys I had as a kid, wire-framed bendy action figures that were meant to be the Greys from "Close encounters". My mum hated them and thought they looked like mutated embryo's.

Not only that, they're too limited. I hate them. They should be focussing on the iPad & tablet market and creating super-cool avatars that beat the pants off anything Xbox has created. Isn't that far more William Gibson than having an ACTION FIGURE for crying out loud? Why bring it down to the level of the meat — especially if we can't customise it with the click of a button? Ooooh, shiny idea ... dress up accessories made in China! Shsssshhhhhhh, nothing to see here, move along! Move along! (Jumps on phone to make a squillion in a new dress-up-dolls market).

"Cut the military budget in half and we could have a colony on mars." I'm with you all the way *after* America switches over to non-oil transport. Then you'll be far less likely to get into REAL wars over the remaining black stuff after we hit peak oil! So, roll out the fast-rail, electric cars, and GenIV nukes. Start eating up some of that nuclear 'waste' (which is actually fuel that could run the world for 500 years).

Once you are off the oil you'll save yourselves $600 billion a year in imported oil. If you think that's expensive, once production peaks and the terminal decline sets in it could double in cost. We're talking a ballpark figure of over a trillion dollars a year! Yes, a million million dollars a year. If America can wean off the oil FAST you may just save yourselves from entering a REAL oil war (with China?) and you will not NEED half your armed forces anyway.

I'm all for a war-time economy to get us off the oil and prevent some of the darker peak oil scenarios.

Then it's time for Mars!

If it slows down too much, we'll be forced to fix it with that old Sci-Fi catch-all procedure; "NUKE IT!"

I take your point, but what is the ERoEI of Shale oil? There are limits to the speed of extracting the non-conventional oils, and they take SERIOUS investment and lots of time. I don't think the non-conventional oil will have a remote chance of replacing conventional oil at the speed at which we need it to come online — not even the most optimistic stuff I've read the tar-sands boosters in Canada raving about has a chance of replacing the accumulative depletion rate of oil post-peak. And this depletion rate gets larger each and ever year, with 56 out of the top 65 oil producing nations having peaked. There's going to be rationing, one way or another. Shame it will have to smack us into a Great Depression, but that's probably what it will take to WAKE US UP to the limits of geology and DO something about it. There's plenty we can do, when the political willpower arrives. I'm not a Malthusian doomer. But peak oil denial just isn't funny any more.

You sound sympathetic to Open Source, so what would it take to swing Australian government and business around, especially when Russia have already mandated that everything on public desktops has to be open source by 2015?

I forgot to say, this was a rant I just put up on my blog. http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/how-the-marketplace-of-software-squanders-human-capital/

Even though I'm not in I.T. and am not a computer developer or programmer, I just have to have a good old-fashioned rant about this one! Microsoft recently commissioned a study into just how much money adopting Open Source can really cost an organisation. It seems that when a company adopts new software, it takes a bunch of time and money to build all the systems from scratch, get them all working together smoothly, and then retrain all the workers. Surprise surprise!

But this superficial study ignores the fact that every time Microsoft callously upgrades their Operating System without due diligence into compatibility problems with a trillion other bits of software and hardware out there, there are a gazillion compatibility issues to sort out. All the IT professionals run off to classes and seminars and have to retrain anyway, and then begin the mammoth task of ironing out all their unique business software routines, banging it all into shape and forcing it to work. It takes time. Microsoft upgrades are a major pain in the butt to the IT staff on any decent sized firm! Of course, they want this. It guarantees job security. But must the job itself be so painful?

To top it all off, Microsoft are being hypocritical here. They are warning against the change to Open Source software because of the costs in changing, yet ignore just how enormously they had just changed Microsoft Office 2007 when they introduced the Ribbon bar across all the old drop down menu's we used to know! Their rather experimental Ribbon was not just a view option leaving all the old commands and drop down menu's intact, but instead killed many of the old commands and routines users knew. It was an autocratic rewrite of the entire Office suite forcing everyone to go back to basics and learn how to suck eggs. The sheer human capital lost in this arrogant decision was astonishing! Workers with years of Office experience, who could format Word with ease and design beautiful Excel spreadsheets in their sleep, all suddenly found themselves powerless. As the old joke goes,

12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

I admit to being an idealist and dreamer, and maybe even a tiny bit lazy. Or is that sane? At a deep, gut level, I just feel that once I learn a piece of basic software like Word I should not have to re-learn the basics all over again. Call me lazy, but I don't want progress and new functionality to force me to have to relearn the basics. The modern world is complex enough, thank you very much!

So even though we are graphic designers and forced to use Mac, the one thing that keeps me wishing a Mac-ish Open Source revolution would sweep away all competitors is the fact that the Open Source model is more grassroots driven, and less likely to waste so much human capital on pointless 'renovations' to the software. Not only that, but it is Open source! The code is open, and available to all. Programmers can design stuff compatible with their Open standards. Microsoft isn't Open. They keep the latest editions of Word locked so that I can't open a .docx file in Open Office. We're talking about a monopoly here! So why on earth did the Australian government mandate support for a monopoly!?

I want the world's governments to accelerate their support of Open Source, not retard it. I like the fact that the Chinese and Russian governments are transitioning into Open Source.

It could eventually save 10's of billions of dollars! I remember a few years back glancing at a study that said tens of billions could be saved across America if the government just paid enough software engineers to develop the best Open Source software possible. The savings to government directly would be one thing, but the saving across the broader economy would be exponentially larger.

If I ran the world I would put all the programmers, Mac designers, psychologists, business leaders, learning and educational experts all in the one room and have them nut out THE best User Interface. They would then standardise it across all platforms and functions, and users would know where basic formatting and print and regular functions were across all the software in all industries. It would be beautiful, easy, and consistent. It would be open, and encourage compatibility. It would be free. And it could possibly even be democratic, with grassroots communities voting on changes to the software proposed by the experts. Major overhauls like the Ribbon, for example, could be voted on.

In my dream world the Operating System and basic Office software would be so ubiquitous, so much a publicly owned asset, that changes in the software would be a matter of the nightly news the way changes to local parks would register on city news! Although, these changes would of course have global significance. A 60 second news item would announce any tinkering with the software, with encouragements to head off to the web-video's demonstrating the sexy new functions.

Once the public sector is heavily invested in Open Source standards, it can't be long before the downfall of monopolies like Microsoft and Mac. They have already had their war, and their software 'arms race' has invented massive innovations and led to the smart phone and iPad. But it is time to standardise while keeping the creativity. It is time to end the confusion. It is time to grab the best of everything and make it open, and give free software to the world. It is time to get this right, and train us computer users all up in the new thang, and make it work. Russia have mandated that all public computers run exclusively Open Source software by 2015. Why can't we?

Thing I don't get is where does the Co2 come from? If the reactor some how captures it from ambient airflow over the device, then that's *amazing*. But if they actually have to *assume* a good flow of concentrated Co2 from somewhere, isn't that adding to the cost? Sucking Co2 out of the air would become a whole new industry, expensive enough in its own right! And if they are talking about using Co2 captured from some fossil fuel plant, then, ummm, isn't that defeating the whole point? It's still addicted to fossil fuels.

When Russia and China appear to be moving away from paying for a ridiculously overpriced OS and Office software, our government is locking it in! Aaaargh! Don't they realise that if Western governments finally wean off the evil giant by growing their own Open Source versions of Linux, and creating beautiful efficient User-Interfaces in Open Office software, the whole economy can eventually wean off America's software and we all win? The Australian government should have mandated exactly the opposite! Today is a sad day to be an Australian. Geeks across the land will be tearing their shirts and throwing ashes over their heads, crying "Alas! Alas, we are undone!"

Gasoline engines are only 10% efficient, so the scheme is less efficient than electric cars + solar panels.

This is a good point! Imagine we build a fleet of GenIV nuclear reactors which could power the world for 500 years just on the nuclear waste we already have sitting around. That's reliable, baseload power despite the weather or season or that other great problem solar advocates don't like to mention, 'the night'. Now imagine most cars are Electric, and just charge at home or work or the shops. There could even be fast-charge stations on highways.

Now imagine that we save the precious gasoline for heavy vehicles, trains, and jets. This is doable! I wish the developers in this field the best of luck.

"I see stupid people. They're walking around like regular people, but they're stupid, and they don't even know they're stupid!"

One of the lines had the "mad scientist's" mum asking why on earth he'd want to make bacteria smart? The hero asked his mother, "Why are you so worried?" She answered, "Ask anyone that's ever cleaned a toilet bowl."

Mandate EV's instead? Hello? Peak oil?

Ok, so while we're all discussing electric cars, please please please get all your online mates to click "LIKE" on the Facebook page of this documentary so that they'll release the trailer! I'm getting desperate! (You couldn't tell?)

http://www.facebook.com/revengeoftheelectriccar