1 and 2 are both well known hypotheses. 3 is very unlikely, since we pick up radio emissions from natural sources all the time. 4 is very unlikely, but possible. 5 well known hypothesis 6 interesting! 7 very, very unlikely, given the natural sources we know about 8 what transmission medium does the telepathy use? Is it EM based? Is the range infinite so you don't have to use EM for long distance comm? 9 Yes, it's a bit silly. Radio isn't all that powerful. 10 Yeah, heard that one before once or twice, but not a well-known one. Good job! 11 well known hypothesis : all we can find at this point is beacons, and nobody is using them 12 well known hypothesis : optical works better, but of course is highly directional, and we're not on line of sight

That's not the speed of the fastest vehicle they'd have; that's the speed of the wavefront of civilization. Think of it as the difference between the 3 months it would have taken a Viking ship to reach Vinland and the 700 years it took for there to be cities in North America with the infrastructure to send out their own ships to explore. That said, there's a big difference between "well, maybe a warp drive might be possible" and the fact that we are pretty sure 0.3 c or so *would* be possible, given technologies we haven't developed yet, but can give a good scientific case for. The big problem isn't accelerating to those speeds; it's doing so in a way that wouldn't harm people or delicate electronics.

The more highly specialized you become, the more likely it is that you can't change industries. But educated? I suspect you are confusing education with training.

You've never heard of EMC? You've never heard of iRobot?

Yeah, because MITRE, Raytheon, Biogen, EMC, iRobot, Akamai, Analog Devices, Tyak, Varian, Millipore, Textron have all fled Boston for Silicon Valley.

The vast majority of real-world programming jobs involve writing programs to keep track of money. The interesting ones involve abstract algebra, vector calculus, probability theory, or differential equations.

Does English to theoretical CS in early forties (no wife or kid) count?