Use cisterns. The standard cistern can be 20m deep by 10m by 10m. Two tanks, one 20m deep, the other above it at 10m. Pump water from the lower one into the upper one at night when power is cheap, recover the energy during the day and sell it back to the utility. Each of these has 98Mj of potential energy when 'charged'.

The technology to build and operate these is trivial. They could be put under public and private buildings, and generate cash flow for private investors, like vending machines or laundromats, only without the vandalism. They also serve as an emergency water source of a million litres in times of disaster.

Sometimes the simplest solution is best.

Agreed. Seeing Hammond do science channel specials is really quite boring. May had a couple of shows that were mildly entertaining (the wine tours, and 'manlab') but nothing like TopGear.

I'm sad it will soon be gone. I enjoyed "the three stooges" quite a lot, particularly the road trips. I'm sure they could keep those up on their own if they wanted to. Not sure who would produce them, however.

California's mental health services have been crap for 30 years. I worked in Berkeley in the late 80s, and there were obviously psychotic people on the streets, harassing folks, laying in the middle of the sidewalk with their pants down, jumping into cars, etc. Nobody helped these people.

California's mental health services have been crap since Reagan was governor, when he closed most of the facilities, in favor of anti-psychotic drugs that didn't work, and 'half way houses' that never opened. Much cheaper this way, though.

Also, if you are mentally ill, you are prohibited from owning a firearm. However, that is seldom enforced, because, almost by definition, if you WANT a gun, you are fucking crazy.

Sadly, this is going to be a problem. Their algorithm is to uprank things that everybody (well, almost everybody) agrees on, while downranking things that people don't agree on. There are clearly ways to scam this sort of system, supressing facts that you don't care about by generating lots of contradictory websites.

They could be like Olympic athletes, and wear jerseys that have the logos of their corporate sponsors while testifying.

The real problem is batteries. If utilities had liquid metal battery banks scattered around, they could supply wind and solar power, or absorb any generated power.

Gort.

Remember Leviathan by Hobbes? The idea is that peace only comes when somebody has overwhelming power, enough to shut down small wars between 'vassal' states. Now, I want to be 'in charge' too, but that probably won't happen, and the next best thing is for whomever IS in charge to be able to kick the shit out of anybody who tries to hurt me.

So, despite his handicap (beliving in the paranormal) he was elected president, and remembered by most Republicans as "The Greatest President".

I also have pancreatic cancer. When I was diagnosed, I thought of doing videos for my kids, but decided that it would be far too Hari Seldon, and I didn't have anything really useful to say.

Death is frightening, and one of the worst parts is the lack of ability to affect the future. In my opinion, the important thing is for her to have good memories of you. Tapes won't help with that. Videos of you two at the tech museum, or at the makers faire would be far more useful.

However, if you have something to say to her that is not age appropriate, a recording might be one way to do it. Otherwise, talk to her NOW.

Good luck.

Driving while only looking in the rear view mirror. It occasionally works...

Doctors don't need the education they get now to dispense pills. The educational hurdles are purely economic, enabling higher costs and more lavish lifestyles for doctors.

<p>I spent a year 'modularizing' a big chunk of the cisco router source base. It was driven by the CTO, who wanted more modularity and code ownership, dammit! It was a terrible idea, caused lots of bugs, and made the code harder to understand and maintain. I did win a prize for the effort, though.
<p>In my opinion, code cleanup on legacy code is rarely going to pay for itself. Even rewrites from scratch usually fail miserably. Legacy software is the way it is for a reason. If you screw with it, you are increasing the system's entropy, which is almost always bad.

Inhofe doesn't agree with you. (not goatse)

If an AI suddenly woke up, killing us would kill it too. It needs power, which we supply. It may need Internet, which we also supply. Spare parts. A cold room. Inputs. Outputs. A reason to live. Meaning. Purpose. Intentionality. All of these come from us now, and in the foreseeable future. I would venture a guess that we will transform ourselves into machines well before we create artificially sentient life.