skowmunk

Yep, and satellites, the types that keep going away and away. They are quite often nuclear powered, to run on-board electronics, but not the reactor type though.

Hmm, I wonder what if somebody can make a hydrocarbon with a hyper calorific density, couple it with a high specific output IC engine, electric motors, put on regenerative braking and then batteries with the highest energy density?

So is the fact, that the laws of physics have been there since big-bang. The question would be, have we realized all the potential of all the laws of physics out there, yet? Have we even discovered all the laws of physics, yet?

No amount of technological progress hmmm, I wouldn't be so confident of using those words. All one has to do is look at the history of the last few centuries, or the rate of scientific progress over the last few millenium. It has been exponential.

I think the convergence of easy availability of knowledge to the masses, availability of massive and cheap computational power and the massive inflow from developing countries into the engineering and scientific workforce , will probably make the word 'exponential' obsolete. But then as they say, proof of the pudding is in eating. We should repeat this conversation 20 years from now and see how it went, just for the fun.

Yes, splitting the atoms locally is a good alternative (at least in theory, for now). Watching the progress of battery technology, from the old mercury types, to NICD, then lithium and then A123, that's a promising area.

Caterpillar is now selling a hybrid bulldozer, who knows, them making a plug-in hybrid bulldozer coupled with A123 or more dense battery tech. will inspire the military to build electric machines.

And I would like to add a qualifier to what you have written: What you say, is the present.

The present is not the future.

Looking for those who can hack through and scale the product up using PHP/MySQL/AJAX (Not interested in fancy stuff right now, focused more on getting the product out through a stable platform).

We can even meet at Startup School. (But sending resumes before itself would be great)

Arpanet, lasers, operations research, low weight ceramics and materials, robotics, aviation..... I guess its probably a never ending list, if one digs deep enough.

(Edit: I am really excited in seeing what technologies will get commercialized in the future, because of this. We so badly need to move forward on the energy sector, if we need to save ourselves)

If you are looking for prospects, I did be interested in seeing if your profile matches what I am looking for. email id on profile.

good luck.

It completely depends on the nature, intentions and wisdom of the leadership.

On India, being socialist, yes in the official name. For practical purposes, it was(please note the past) controlled semi-capitalism, where the control was used to line up the politicians and bureaucrats pockets. - if you are an indian, you might recognize this term "license raj"

Thank god for capitalism, it ain't perfect, but its the best out there.

About the indication of the strengths of a communist form of governance, nope your example doesn't take into consideration certain very important factors working here. If you compare India and China - China had a head start of 20 years, when Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the West for setting up their factories, in the 70's. India started opening up only in early 90's under P.V. Narasimha Rao (and, to give due credit - Dr. Manmohan Singh the then Finance minister and current Prime Minister)

So, its more an example for 'its better to have wise leaders as early as possible' than 'communist form of government is better than non-communist governments'

my $0.0000002

But, even Barnes & Noble can't stock all the books that Amazon makes available. With Amazon, if I need, I can get it the next day.

I have a very small company that I run off my regular job hours. I wanted to do some marketing, get some paper, some other supplies, print stuff in the middle of the night and post some flyers around town. If Walmart weren't open and didn't have the supplies, I would have been limited to what I could work out during the regular hours of the small businesses there. The horror is, I don't know why, many of them simply shut off at 5, books shops and some others. Thats crazy.

There was this printing I used to get done at a local business, to be honest they were incredibly sweet to deal with. But their lead time was 3 days at best for printing some 1500 flyers. With OfficeMax in the same city, 2-3 hours, sometimes 30 minutes. It gave me incredible flexibility to change things on the fly - typos, content or whatever.

These were the real situations I faced. Without them, my business might not have been impossible, but definitely quite a bit more complicated.

And, of course, everything has its pros and cons.

Love those words. I think the same. All those deficiencies in India and China, they are great technical and business opportunities to be tapped. Just massive opportunities that will keep growing at a fast clip for decades to come.

Now, now, don't get me wrong guys. There is nothing wrong with helping people and making money in the process. That's also the sustainable way to make lives better.

That is a joke. I read somewhere that the US is more socialist than China these days and I would have to agree. US has social security and apparently China has done away with the state income to people or something like that.

China is just an authoritarian(currently) country marching towards capitalism and actually democracy also - they have started experimenting with some low level elections. It cannot sustain itself as a authoritarian nation in the long run. When people start being materially well, then they will focus more on demanding intellectual freedom. With increased technology it will also be difficult for the government to control people forever. The electronic great wall of china will fall down sooner or later like the berlin wall.

Moreover, communism, as great the ideal of equality is, in practice it simply cannot survive the most predominant characteristic of human nature - the 'self'.

Would have to admire the way the Chinese leadership does things in measured increments but more or less sure footed way. Russia is too much of a bad example on what will happen when a government system changes suddenly without preparation. It took them almost 10 years to recover.

(me injun)

To effectively lead big nations or corporates, doesn't one need to be able to comprehend and deal with issues much beyond just ones education or work background?

Wouldn't it require an engineer who understand the non-engineering aspects or vice-versa?

Once, I got a list of CEOs of fortune 100 companies compiled with their education background researched. The education column was half full, my contractor could not find the education of all (nor I think, I could). Of those, whose education we could find, it was all over the place, engineering, psychology, accounting, law, chemical and what not.

That was definitely very admirable, for a country in their position, where they have to bring out large masses of people out of poverty, as quickly as possible, you need such leadership.

".....I can avoid doing so in the future......"

It is me who should work on not coming to a conclusion too quickly, without knowing the background. But, Thanks. It was also a good lesson for me by observation in how to react, in an indignant but respectable manner, when somebody accuses you of something that you are not.

(Talking about videos, whoever put up that link to Randy Pausch's Last Lecture Video on HN, just completed watching it- THANK YOU VERY MUCH, tried, but its been tough to trace back to the original posting)

Driving, lots of driving on the country side, love the changing scenery, that's one thing where I can continue the thinking while doing something relaxing.

(edit: about the driving, its big time fun, to go into some obscure parts of a city or new neighborhoods (obviously when the traffic is real low - like late in nights), or some new places in the country side, figure out new routes to the same places, its like a jig-saw puzzle. Another thing I am addicted to - I like seeing the same places in different circumstances, seeing the same neighborhoods in the day, evenings and night, or some remote places in the country side in different seasons - its great fun/relaxing and somehow I feel my mind getting stimulated at the same time)

But only recently did I watch a documentary (hmm, probably on hulu.com) which was completely based on that book.

VERY GOOD.

I hadn't thought of it that way till now, but now when I think back, it does make a chunk of sense. I might even have unwilling intimidated some, by talking about stuff they didn't know (they, as in customers)

The point about "sensitive positions are weary..." thats another good one.

Who knows, may be HN (and the contributors on it) would be the perfect educators for me to get out my social awkwardness!!

From personal experience, I would say, get rid of that guilt. That was a consistent and big mental block earlier in my life and still is occasionally till I get rid of it. The moment I get rid of it, I feel free to move forward.

It could be hindering you also.

When I was in FL I had signed up here http://www.metromin.org/

I still keep getting emails about these activities.

It was financial.

Its basically the kids of people who work at their house (the government provides them to my dad), of very low income employees in my dad's office and such. She has also funded the education of a few distant relatives who couldn't afford college education. In these cases, the kids had aspirations, some of them were real good hard workers, but the parents were in a really bad position financially. They could not afford to fund good tutoring (which is required for entrance into decent technical colleges here) or fund the college education itself.

She funded their kids' annual tutoring or college fees for the duration of that tutoring or college degrees.

I misinterpreted and read sarcasm in what you wrote. Apologies for that.

Another time, I participated in a school kids career counseling event (it was a one day event)

For quite some time, I used to attend the meetings of a local NGO involved with energy conservation. Helped them collect over 200 signatures for a petition. The petition was presented to the Governor of Indiana for increasing energy efficiency of government buildings. I think I was the highest or the second highest collector of signatures.

Also helped them a bit with their website - back then my skills were too basic though.

I also keep cheerleading my mom :). She helps a few kids with their school/college education. There have been times when some abuse those good intentions and trust and she gets disappointed. I keep telling her to soldier on (not that she can't without me telling) and that these are opportunities to learn how to select better.

I wish I could participate more often. Hopefully, once my goals are on track and self-sustainable...

May be the solution would be to colonize another planet fast enough, before we become sophisticated enough to march towards that 0 population eventuality.

Over population will cause pressure on the sustainability of resources on the planet, not to mention inefficient use of resources and resulting pollution.

Under population in a society will put other pressures on the sustainability of a society - more of the economic type and on a longer time frame. The pressures would be more about having a critical enough market size that can support enough jobs and hence a decent enough quality of life.

A pattern that stuck me, across different countries and even different states within a country - the higher the education level generally is, the higher is the free will (or the desire to express it) and the capability to take independent actions to external pressures, the lower is the birth rate. Of course, this is putting it in simplistic terms.

If one would like to not open an application (browser) to be able to blog what would make them like opening another application to be able to blog without opening the browser?

Unless that alternative application can bring more user friendly utility than blogging directly through the browser.

I am a web technology neophyte, so wouldnt' know if such a thing exists, but if there is ONE application (could be desktop a la Ipad or web based) that can simultaneously post on facebook, twitter, techcrunch, posterous, myspace, orkut, etc I think it would save a lot of effort to lots of people who like to post on multiple blogs, etc. If you can save a lot of effort to a lot of people, you got a product with customers.

If it can have a selectability feature if one wants to post just on one of these social/blogging entities, still better.

Good luck.

(edit: Actually all that mhewett says, is right, observe as much as you can (surprisingly not many really do), try to learn whatever you think can be useful in the future, except for one very deadly thing(the fatal flaw) - the 'plan to start in 10 years'.)

Start a start up or go execute an idea or help somebody else execute an idea and use that as a tool for learning relevant stuff that is required to successfully execute an idea. Whatever reason you are not able to execute it, thats an indication of where you have to plug holes in your skill set, either by learning yourself or developing relationships with somebody who is strong in that area.

If you keep executing and keep plugging the holes in your skill set, you will have the fastest learning curve that no college education can provide by itself.

Do complete your college education, it does teach a lot of good basics on different useful stuff and its a great backup in case things don't work out with the business end by the time you complete education. But thats what it gives - basics, useful basics, basics that are not enough for anything but an entry level job.

College education + loads of experience by the time you complete education = killer resume.

This is from a guy who has done his fair share of education and waited too long to go after his dream ( of course, not too long to let the dream die or go after it now :))

Good luck.

(edit: If you start the action part now, you will also attract a network of friends and teachers who appreciate a person like you and can probably help you. That network you start building now can be a deal maker or breaker for succes later. )