Java isn't proprietary. Oracle has some proprietary java tools and JRE, but the java standard and a reference implementation are open.

I'd be willing to call them us, even if it turns out to be some matrixy robot type thing.

If we're still alive in 5 billion years, I think we'll have left this rock for another.

Consumer SATA grade drives are no more failure prone than Enterprise SAS drives. All of their systems are RAID6 backed in disk groups of 15, so a drive failure doesn't result in data loss.

No, You don't see a green laser in a vacuun. What you see is the light from the laser bouncing of dust and whatnot.

The DNA doesn't just become unreadable in a few places, it breaks down completely. You'd be lucky to get 4 or 5 base pairs in a strand.

At 320 million users, Google runs at around less 1 watt per user. Google's datacenters tend to be 2 or 3 times more efficient than most other companies'. 4 constant watts per user or .096 KWH per day is less than a few minutes of your average laptop running.

The dalvik virtual machine on android since 2.2 or 2.3 JIT compiles the DVK into native code.

A marketing term.

Having an emergency stop button pretty much seals the deal for me.

I want one. Not to use as my everyday phone, but just to play with. Like a raspi with a screen. Also, It'd be fun to show off my Chinese ripoff.

The gravitational force of the sun would decrease if the mass of the earth was less, and if we're still going the same velocity in orbit, we'd continue to orbit the sun just the same. We would accelerate towards the sun at the same rate we currently do. Kind of the same way that an item accelerates towards earth…

Using standard reed-Solomon or other error correction, we don't have to worry about a few off base pairs every once in a while.

Look again, he's doing that from the outside.

I think a Slashdot-type commenting/moderation system would apply very well here. Push trolls down, make it possible to comment anonymously, reward users for making positive comments, and filter comments based on content. http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml

Yeah. I think they should do something like slashdot. http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml People can comment autonomously, trolls get modded away, all of the comments are easy to filter but it's easy to follow a thread without having to do much clicking.

There's a brothel in Russia that does something kind of like that.

Now it kills cats on Earth and Mars.

the Keyboard, that is.

Seconded. I've got a drawer full of 'em in my desk.