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Comment Re:This is a great example. (Score 1) 144

If it is going to cost $50 million (or more!) to build the prototype after $10 or 20 million just to design it and do all of the computations, you'd have to both have a very, very serious plan with a very, very high probability of success

I remember following the late Bussard's ploywell development a few years ago before he passed and before the Navy snapped his team up. They claimed to have actually achieved net fusion in the lab and still needed something like $200 mil just to get the engineering done to scale up to a production size prototype.

Comment Re:Some more details and fixing some missing detai (Score 1) 160

In the UK, Uber cars and drivers have to follow the same registration and licensing requirements as private hire taxis, which they do in my city and they don't seem to have made much of a fuss about it. Every other day though there's an article where they kick up a stink about being forced to follow municipality regulations and how it shouldn't affect them as they're not really a taxi service. I've no idea why they think it would fly anywhere else.

Comment Re:Apparently regulation is "socialist" (Score 1) 312

I don't know why Uber are whining about this. It appears they try to enter every market with their cowboy style of 'ride sharing', then once they get a dressing down by the local authorities they'll adapt the service, get some properly insured and licensed taxis to operate as part of the Uber network and then just run the service like a local taxi firm but with a cool app. That's what they did in the UK anyway so I don't know why they're now trying to launch in Germany with lax standards.
Canada

Wirelessly Charged Buses Being Tested Next Year 245

An anonymous reader writes "From the article: 'Bombardier's electric transit technology will be tested next winter on buses in Montreal, followed in early 2014 on a route in the German city of Mannheim. The transportation giant's Primove technology is designed to allow buses to be charged by underground induction stations when they stop to let passengers hop on and off.' This technology while impressive may not make it to the U.S. even if proven successful due to the lack of popularity of public transportation. If they could only get my phone to charge wirelessly." The article says that the induction charging stuff could also be used to charge trains.

Comment Re:I wonder... (Score 1) 949

In both cases you've acquired the same content, in the same form, for the same price. But now we're supposed to believe that because it happens via the internet, a crime has been committed? That their business is now suddenly failing because people are doing the same thing they've done for years with tape players and vcrs?

There's a slight difference. When time-shifting (recording from TV or Radio), the broadcaster has already paid a royalty to broadcast the content, which is significantly higher than a mechanical royalty paid on a CD or DVD. When downloading, usually the original source (a DVD or CD) has only netted the publisher a mechanical royalty on one sale (or no royalty at all if it was leaked).

Comment This is great! (Score 1) 277

Hopefully the way things go will be something like this: The newest generation of browsers (Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Opera 10) all leave beta. They all pass acid3 (Chrome almost) and are standards compliant. Web developers can't resist all the HTML5 & Javascript goodness and a few killer apps start to support compliant browsers only. IE dies overnight, cue celebration scene from Endor!

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