iRobot

slightly off-topic, but relevant for the future of this technology.

I love Sci-Fi novels such as Peter Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction" where an AI does the function of all local and central government in a habitat for no personal gain and every single person is connected to it real time on a personal basis.

The day we can move from the slimy self preserving low-life which seems to inhabit this space now will be a better day for everyone.

I wonder how close we are?

Why was this down-voted? I agree with the poster, and as far as I see, I wake up and everyone's clock is 1 second wrong, why precisely should I give a frig about this and how is the world going to end or change due to the clock going from :59 to :00 instead of :60 or anything being a second out?

Total and utter bollocks.

Millions of Chinese students have or will have done engineering and science at the degree level, that combined with the Chinese business acumen will almost certainly ensure them both designing and building the things we require in the future.

The USA will however have plenty of patent lawyers to ensure they are all sued if they try to get too clever.

Lousy web site (IMHO) a 3 inch wide column of text in the middle of my browser and not even a picture of the car

Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong?

As a Sci-Fi fan, "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light" would be a nice one to be wrong

Where are the ARM based Chrome books ?

I am one of those people who have been "corn-holed" over the last 30 years and I seriously don't care how many publishers or retail outlets I put out of business by buying electronically.

The Internet selling model is here to stay and as long as the artist or author gets their fair cut for creating the work, the model is fine by me. The fact this author is tied to his publisher is between him and the publisher and not my problem.

I've read some rubbish by established authors with ridiculous e-book prices and some fine stuff for $0.99 by authors quite happy with the e-book format, Amazon does not need to apologise to anyone IMHO in fact I'm preparing my first book for publication with them later this year, I doubt I will make much but I have a day job and the Karma value will be immense, I suspect this is the feeling of a lot of authors (yes there is a lot of shit ebooks to wade through but its worth it when you find a gem!)

If there isnt an ebook and the price is too high I go to the library or dont read it (seriously how many people would seriously read a photocopied book)

God this guys got a downer on all things scifi.

Get a life, sci-fi is just entertainment and a little escapeisn, not everyone wants to read through 500 pages of math and physics to find some underlying revelation about the universe.

The other ship on the front page of the enterprise web site the `skylon`, looks awesome, almost like it was designed by Apple compared to the current crop of 'beige box' rockets. Its design spec seems to put it in the class of space DC3 too.

http://www.menuetos.net/

Someone should explain to this guy the concept of bootstrapping.

Saying that a man should be allowed to dream big and NASA are the ones who we should be laughing at considering they currently cant even send a man 100 miles into space.

Hopefully Elon and the new generation of space entrepreneurs will remedy this over time.

In 1989 I ran a Unix system with 1000 users on hardware less powerful than this, why this kind of horse power cannot run something as simple as a web browser says more about the inefficiencies inherent in current operating systems and programming methods than they do about the hardware.

Another upside is you end up with a company full of auditors so its unlikely there is going to be much funny business going on.

Step One achieved. Now if you could just feed and educate the little fellows and keep them from having too many kids and stop their (generally) useless and corrupt governments from destroying their countries and killing each other, the world would truly be a nicer place.

if(enemy=true) FireWeapons(); // (sic)

A bit off-topic but they should just kill these bastards the second they find them.

(and this is from a New Zealander, not an American)

Put a laser on it and give me a light sabre and..

Loving it, great to be able to exclude annoying sites pay for content sites. Keep up the good work

A word count on the summary page would be nice for text docs

Ouch, I do all 3!

Good luck

A Lot of developers have a MOTD file in their applications, before I compiled my motd file I looked everywhere for a simple motd feed but gave up as it was all too much time and trouble and quicker to compile my own off the various text files out there. Maybe a future market but I doubt it (there again porn sites do quite well and you can get it for free)

You seriously need some sort of moderation, no-ones going to stay on a page where on the first page one of the quotes is "does this work"

Text adventures rocked until dungeon master came along and nuked the genre. They may be nice to code, but life's too short and I would not play one again.

I'm no real fan of MU or kim dot com but the way all this occurred taking down the guys whole business empire and putting him under arrest makes me think it can happen to any dot com company which I am (I trade in Europe, NZ and australia and a .com address seems the most logical to make it country agnostic)

I seriously hope he takes the NZ government for millions for being a bunch of FBI arse kissers.

And maybe he can use the wads of cash he gets to fund a start-up pirate party here.

18 Years to market - WTF, we should have mr-fusion by then

It kinda makes the asteroid mining venture from yesterday seem a lot more sensible and tangible an investment long term.

Its a rocket.

The basic research was done by the Germans at the end of WW2 and dont forget Russia, they got there first. Nasa wasnt even around then.

Governments can and do stop innovation quite well all the time.

The good thing here is that technically once off planet, you don't have any government to answer too, however I hate to think what regulations the bureaucrats are dreaming up to try and get around this.

Well said.

..who were mostly creating powerpoint presentations and not rockets.

No web site, nothing on google, I'd start by creating a marketing department

Seriously, I'd buy some shares even if its a very high risk venture, if I knew how too.