"formed by a rocky meteorite of about 200 meter diameter travelling at 20 meters a second."

Ignore this - double post

Actually...

Slight edit because of timeout, paragraph has been rephrased and clarified as follows (edits in bold):

I feel that the linked article bit about 'not actually conform[ing] to the laws of physics' is being horribly misleading. Having read that article, what stands out is that it is merely stating that nanobots as an analogue of the macroscopic mechanical paradigm won't work - meaning you can't use gears and sprockets and…

They're already lugging around all those clubs, so what's an added fire extinguisher or two?

All we can do is manage that risk, am I right?

I was just asking that question myself...

Actually, as countries get more and more developed, population growth rate declines. People become more educated and begin to have less children than the replacement rate, thus the population growth slows and can actually become negative resulting in a shrinking population. It is actually a big problem in Japan, a…

The right to and expectation of privacy exists regardless of whether or not companies and the government obey that expectation. Attempting to put into law such privacy is not bringing that right into existence, but rather it is solidifying a concept in such a way that those companies and the government must obey it or…

All that money and they still can't hire a better graphic artist?

How long was it before electricity became commonplace in the home? Radio? Computers? Lasers? LCD displays?

An excellent book; I've tried convincing a few friends to read it, but alas, they are not as avid a reader as I.

Don't we all - science fiction tends to understate the potential influence of instant communication. With such a thing, components of a computer would not have to share local space - you could distribute the components for a computer across the universe and it would still work. It would render a significant number of…

Not necessarily. This is more akin to having two entangled colored balls in boxes, that (the balls) can randomly change colors (for example, if they decohere, or if you measure the ball's color directly). Now, imagine applying this to more boxes, being swapped around to perform a calculation using the color of the…

Timed out while editing. Cont'd.

pc peripherals NEVER sell

An effective solution that should most certainly be included as a safeguard; however, one must take care to not rely solely on it as it does not protect against malicious or active interference (ie, spoofing the alignment data).

Efficiency is not the only measure of success of a technology, and safety measures have a distinct tendency to be directly at odds with efficiency. I am aware that a wider beam would exhibit a cumulatively larger atmospheric absorption of energy as compared to a tightly focused one, but this is something that should…

The beam disaster you are talking about has a relatively simple solution - simply widen your beam and make a larger receiver. If you beam back 100,000 jiggiwatts to a 100-meter wide dish, you're probably receiving quite the energy density - 10 jiggiwats - but if your receiver is 1000 meters in diameter, your…