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I remember such ideas from when I was a boy. That is long ago...
They have been repeated at irregular intervals ever since. One issue that more or less was solved is that of aviation: Air crafts used to follow fairly well defined paths. (Is 'paths' what the aviation people call them? I am not a pilot!) Power could be beamed down where there were no such paths. To increase air space capacity, this has been relaxed in recent years. Planes may to a much higher degree go 'wherever they like' ... such as right through a megawatt microwave beam. I am not that worried about the power blackout it could cause; we can handle that.
A 10 watt microwave beam is not a problem, of course. But the cost per watt is not enough to justify it.
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trønderen wrote: Planes may to a much higher degree go 'wherever they like' ... such as right through a megawatt microwave beam.
Don't forget the birds, already being decimated by wind turbines, feral cats, and environmental destruction.
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Marc Clifton wrote: birds
and solar farm heat rays
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Literally, 'decimated' means 'reduced to a tenth'. If nine out of ten of the world's birds are already killed by windmills, we really should look out!
(Which makes me think of a cult novel of my student days, "Even cowgirls get the blues". In those days, the whooping cranes were not killed by windmills, but threatened nevertheless. I have to dig up that book to re-read it; it is 30+ years since last time!)
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No, decimate literally meant reduced by a tenth. When the Romans punished a group of soldiers this way, they couldn't afford to kill 90% of them, or they wouldn't have had an empire for long! 
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Yes, I see that I was wrong.
Yet: Windmills having killed off one tenth of all birds ... No, I refuse to believe it.
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I've definitely noticed that there are fewer birds. And fewer insects, which could well be the cause. I find it somewhat disturbing, and I'm no Chicken Little that lends much credence to some of the nonsense that's currently in vogue.
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That is certainly true - but the decline started decades before windmills.
When was the first global outcry over bees dying? Must be at least twenty years ago.
It must be more than thirty years ago when I first read about butterflies dying out in Great Britain, "killed" by motor highways. No, the problem was not that they were hit by cars, but they were scared - didn't dare to cross the road. So the result was that in a greenland closed in by busy roads, you ended up with so much inbreeding among the butterflies living there, never daring to "leave home", that they developed genetic defects.
There is a strong decline in the bird population in parts of the world that haven't seen a single windmill yet. There is a decline of small and large mammals. There is a decline of ocean fauna. There are multiple explanations, not a single one, but we know for sure that in a large number of cases, it has nothing to do with windmills.
Let me take one example: Old forests are home to thousands of different insects, which are food for birds. If you start cultivating the forest, taking out timber/wood as soon as the trees are fully grown, leaving nothing to die of old age and rot away, you ruin the ecosystem of many insects, causing birds to starve. Without birds, some predators starve as well.
This is taken seriously nowadays (in some countries). A couple of weeks ago, I read a news story about a old forest that the owner wants to cut down in order to build high-income rental mountain cabins. In this forest, more than fifteen hundred different insects have been found, and for now, the wildlife protection services have stopped the cabin plans, from fear that it would be devastating to the rich bird life in the area.
In complex ecological systems, we should be very careful when assuming that a correlation also is a cause/effect. Maybe scientists, who have thoroughly studied the problem area, can conform a cause/effect - or reject it completely. Or tell us that, say, windmills may have a marginal effect, but other causes are much more significant.
One aspect that we should not overlook: For creatures living in large flocks / swarms / schools, the environment usually sets a limit on its size. Take codfish in the Norwegian sea: If not harvested, the schools would not have been significantly larger; it would be limited by available food, physical space etc. So although every pair of codfish produces several million eggs during their lifetime, only two grow up to become mature cods. If we harvest half of the school, four of several million eggs will lead to grown fish.
Even though you can read reports about heaps of insects found under the windmills (I am not sure how scientific those reports are), they may affect the swarm in the same way as cod fishing affects the fish school: Making room for other individuals to grow up. Even if the size of the swarm is diminished, it could be for completely different reasons, such as their natural habitat being destroyed by cultivation. In some cases, scientists know. In many cases, the scientists will answer with a deep sigh: We do have some theories, but we are not given the resources to do a proper investigation. No one is willing to pay for a study unless they have direct economic benefit from it...
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trønderen wrote: 'paths'
flight path or route
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Maybe THIS is where the Georgia Congresswoman got the idea?
Yes, I live in Georgia but not her district.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: theoretically
Theoretically, I'm immortal.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Theoretically, I'm immortal.
... so far.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Proving me wrong is illegal; so, my theory stands, for all my life.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Proving me wrong is illegal
No, it's not. I don't have to take any active steps; all I have to do is to outlive you.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: all I have to do is to outlive you.
I am theoretically immortal, how would you outlive me as a mortal?
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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If I (or anyone else) did outlive you, would that not disprove your assertion of being "theoretically immortal?"
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: If I (or anyone else) did outlive you, would that not disprove your assertion of being "theoretically immortal?"
It would; but that's just theory, and empirical evidence still suggests otherwise.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Theoretical and pratical aproaches are theoretically the same but on the praxis...
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: Theoretical and pratical aproaches are theoretically the same but on the praxis...
Based on the models I must be utterly immortal.
Never tried it in praxis; that would be arrogant.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Mobilize.Net announced a new automated conversion tool that helps migrate legacy ASP.NET Web Forms applications created with the old Windows-only .NET Framework to the new cross-platform ASP.NET Core framework. Is it called "File > New Project"?
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The customer service for that must be hell. 
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In 1972, two students learning FORTRAN came up with a fantastic new programming language called INTERCAL. INTERCAL is a bit unusual. No, "that one" isn't mentioned
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I think that calling an exclaimation mark a wow is actually a great idea. For starters it's easier to spell, and it's only one syllable.
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