A way of using nuclear power to directly generate electricity, without going through a thermal cycle first. Similar to how photovoltaics work: instead of capturing heat from sunlight and going through a Carnot cycle engine to generate electricity, PV directly converts photons to electricity. Something like this with nuclear power would be revolutionary I think.
Perhaps it could be turned on and off as needed: lose a finger in an accident, and take a drug to turn regeneration on. Grow your finger back in a week, and then take another drug (or stop taking the first drug) to go back to normal.
That's not how it works. For your finger to be capable of regeneration, the relevant genes would have to be in all your cells beforehand.
Advanced genetic engineering can be used to ensure that particular genes get activated only in the presence of some molecule that isn't naturally present in humans, so it would happen only if you take that particular drug; but it would still be applicable only to "newly built" humans e.g. as part of in vitro fertilization, not as something that can be applied to adults.
I wonder if part of the deal was house-arrest for the surgeon. Lots of (usually lesser) crimes these days are being punished with house arrest to save money because prisons are so expensive (and also do absolutely nothing to rehabilitate people, in fact quite the opposite). Forcing the surgeon to have house arrest (which includes being able to go to work, but not much else), and still go to work to pay for a big-ass settlement, is still punishment.
That's the same thing. There is no OS I'm aware of that has separate versions for "laptops" and "desktops"; a laptop IS a "desktop" these days, as opposed to a "mobile device" running a mobile OS (Android/iOS).
When I get into a conversation about Free software being better than proprietary software, I focus on real problems with modern proprietary software that average users have these days, mainly with operating systems. For instance, lots of people don't like Windows 10's interface, but there's also the spyware and advertising issues, and various other annoyances with it, plus the forced-update problem and the fact that you have to separately purchase so much software for it to make it useful. With desktop Linux, you don't have these problems: lots of software is easily installed from the repos and you wind up with a fully-functional system very easily, updates are ridiculously simple and fast and don't prevent you from using your computer, updates aren't forced on you breaking your software, your OS won't be forcibly "upgraded" to a new version you don't want, performance-crippling anti-virus software isn't needed, etc. On the Apple side, the OS is tied to very expensive and now-crippled hardware (see the new MBP which lacks ports, requiring you to carry around a whole bunch of dongles) and still has the problem of not having useful software by default. For people who insist on using some kind of proprietary software like Photoshop, I just don't bother, but for people who just want something to surf the web, write simple documents, watch videos, etc., desktop Linux works great so this is how I pitch it.
"and the fact that you have to separately purchase so much software for it to make it useful."
That's not a negative, especially for anyone who makes their living selling software. And there's nothing special about Linux that saves it from that; if it became popular, commercial software would be written for it as well, and you'd have the same problem.
>That's not a negative, especially for anyone who makes their living selling software.
So you think free things should be banned so that leaches who want to make money selling things can do so? How idiotic.
If I'd like to make a living selling air for breathing, is it wrong for people to breathe the air that's freely available? I guess so, in your world.
>And there's nothing special about Linux that saves it from that; if it became popular, commercial software would be written for it as well, and you'd have the same problem.
Here you completely miss the point. I'm not talking about special niche software, just basic stuff. I can't even edit a fucking text file in Windows without installing some special third-party software, because Windows doesn't come with a usable text editor. Luckily there's free stuff available on the web for some things like that, but it's a big PITA to go find some website, find a download link, and install the program. On Linux, this kind of basic software is part of a standard install, and at the very worst, all I have to do is something like "sudo apt-get install vim".
>So you think free things should be banned so that leaches who want to make money selling things can do so? How idiotic.
Point out where I said it should be banned. And nice that you equate someone trying to feed their family with being a "leech". How idiotic.
> I can't even edit a fucking text file in Windows without installing some special third-party software, because Windows doesn't come with a usable text editor
>Bullshit. Notepad is a pathetic excuse for a text editor. It can't even handle different line endings. Wordpad isn't much better.
They're still text editors that work just fine to edit text files.
>And yes, someone who tries to leech off of society providing something that can be easily obtained for free (such as air) is just that: a leech. Obviously, you DO want to ban such things, or else you wouldn't advocate leeching. You're a pathetic excuse for a person, advocating for people to be forced to purchase breathable air.
Again, show where I want to ban free software. And if I write software, how is it easily obtained for free if I'm charging for it? And your air analogy doesn't work unless I'm the one creating the air as well.
What your dad got is an IOL: intraocular lens. These things are pretty amazing these days; they can correct myopia and astigmatism, eliminate cataracts, and eliminate the need for reading glasses too because the new lens is focus-able (in the ones that are "accommodating"). I'm thinking of getting these in 5-10 years, since I'm just starting to have problems with reading now; by that time, new artificial lenses will be a perfect solution to my eyesight problems I can expect to have at that age.
Your dad sounds like one of these annoying non-technical people who hears one technical term (e.g. LASIK) and then applies that in blanket fashion to anything remotely related. He probably calls Android phones "iPhones", and he probably calls laptop computers "iPads", and he probably calls the Internet "AOL".
Those risk numbers aren't really valid for everyone, for all activities. The steps thing, for instance, is BS for most people; steps are a serious danger, of course, to elderly people, which is why the mortality number is so high for them. For healthy adults under retirement age, the risk isn't remotely as high.
Similarly, your risk of dying from getting hit by an asteroid are actually pretty significant according to some sources. Do you know how many people in history have actually died from an asteroid strike? Probably zero, at least in the last couple millenia, and almost certainly zero in the last century. But the risk is still pretty high because if a giant earth-killer asteroid hits the planet, we're all dead, or a city-killer asteroid could cause massive devastation. A small one hit a Russian city a few years ago and 1000 people were injured.
So you have to take some of these with a grain of salt. Car accidents, like the steps thing, probably also affect different places differently. Cars are much more deadly in some 3rd-world nations, for instance; does that 1/606 statistic include those? And death rates per mile traveled are probably higher in some places than others (rural vs. urban). And they're also probably higher for drunk drivers (though obviously the drunks do kill innocent people too), and possibly lower for small children (because they're better protected in car seats).
