The Expendables is a kind of supergroup action movie, starring Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. It has absolutely nothing to do with tech, gadgetry, or science, but enough members of the Giz staff went crazy for it that we had to put it somewhere—so it finds its way to Remainders. My take? Looks dumb, but not transcendently dumb like the Crank movies. [Expendables Trailer]

I'm in a weird place with plants right now. You see, I had this pretty flowering hanging plant in my window, but I went on vacation for ten days and came back to find that it had not only died due to lack of care from a certain roommate I won't name, but in death had afflicted my bedroom with a large and tenacious family of tiny black ants. I tried to save its life with gallons of water over the next two days—I pleaded with it, I begged it to hold on—but while the plant didn't survive, those fucking ants did. In short, screw plants.

But now, I'm starting to think there's more to plants than meets the eye. Research has shown that mustard plants actually favor members of their own family (plants also descending from the same mother, at least) by sharing nutrients and not competing for sunlight. That's adorable, isn't it? Maybe I'll buy a mustard plant next. [Wired]

A Tokyo wine bar has begun selling not just wine by the glass, but self-serve wine by the glass, poured from a luxury vending machine. What's nice is that you can actually see the bottle, though you don't get that weird thrill of approving a wine to a waiter without having any clue if it's good or not. (Side note: The last time somebody asked me what I thought of a particular wine, I learned that saying "I get a distinct grape flavor" will not win you much respect from oenophiles.) Anyway, it's pretty cool, but ends up here in Remainders because it's not new; apparently similar contraptions have been installed all over the States in the past year or two. But it's new to us, and a pretty cool idea to boot. [CrunchGear]

In fact, the idea is intended to save the planet from the scourge of global warming. The "Stratoshield", as he calls it, would spray what some would consider an environmentally acceptable amount of liquid sulfur into the air through a 15 mile long hose attached to a helium-filled balloon. Apparently, the sulfur would dim the sun's rays, effectively cooling the earth in an emergency situation. Yes, it sounds crazy (much like the hurricane defense system he proposed with Bill Gates) but keep in mind that when filthy rich captains of industry have kooky ideas, lots of other people take them seriously. [TechFlash]

The application, scooped up by our buddy Todd at TechFlash, describes a machine that would have pistons, and would even burn some kind of fuel (a "reactant" ignited by sparkplug), but would be aided by electromagnets to speed up the recovery process, and do away with the need for alternating pistons. Basically, the piston would fire, then be rapidly slammed back into closed position by the magnetic force. Theoretically, the piston could operate entirely without fuel, using magnetism on both ends to rapidly repel and attract.

Gates & Co. even introduced a sketch of a piston engine with spark plugs on both sides, for rapidly firing the thing back and forth, or alternately using magnetism to slide the piston back and forth. (This is presumably how some motors work already—engineers?)

The neatest configuration, to me, is the one with two pistons, end to end, with a single combustion chamber and sparkplug. The fuel burns shoving both outward, and the electromagnetic mechanism slams them back together.

It's actually a great patent to read, especially if you're mechanically minded. I am sure there's plenty I missed here, so have a look. [TechFlash]

Name: Paul Allen
Current Job: Owning the World
Years at Microsoft: 8, but stayed on as a senior strategy advisor
Position: Co-Founder
Paul Allen has more money than most countries. He owns, among so many other things, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks, the future Seattle Major League Soccer team, most of the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, the seventh-largest yacht in the world, Charter Communications, a large stake of DreamWorks Animation, and you and your entire extended family. He has donated, as of 2007, roughly $900 million to charitable organizations. He bought the guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock. He has a flower fly named after him. This is unconfirmed, but Paul Allen may in fact be a mythological money-making deity. He owns the words I'm writing at this very moment. That one, right there, he owns that.

Chris Peters
Current Job: Owner of the Professional Bowlers Association
Years at Microsoft: 18
Position: Programmer, Vice President
Chris Peters, Microsoft's 105th employee, was unable to qualify for the Professional Bowlers Association after his retirement as Vice President. So he did what any self-respecting technology executive/bowling enthusiast would do: bought the league, saved it from extinction, and became a bowling hero despite not really being a pro-level phenom.

Name: Stephanie DeVaan
Current Job: Abortion Rights Activist
Years at Microsoft: 5
Position: Software Marketing
Stephanie DeVaan is the founder of the Washington Women for Choice, a Seattle-based PAC working to preserve women's rights with the help of her Microsoft millions. I've got a lot of respect for her group, but I am annoyed there's really nothing funny you can say about abortion.

Name: Raghav Kher
Current Job: Bollywood Empresario
Years at Microsoft: 8
Position: Acquisitions
Seventymm, Raghav Kher's fourth company, is India's answer to Netflix. Kher saw the endless stream of films—totally and offensively indistinguishable to Americans—coming out of India, and jumped at the opportunity to bring online DVD distribution to the country. The Bollywood film industry has yet to burst into spontaneous, colorful song in thanks.

Name: John Sage
Current Job: CEO: Pura Vida Coffee, Hippie
Years at Microsoft: 10
Position: Marketing Executive
Not to be confused with the 14th-century English torturer of the same name, this John Sage took his Microsoft riches and expertise to a number of startups, currently the philanthropic Pura Vida Coffee Company. Pura Vida trades in organic, shade-grown—and fair-trade—Costa Rican coffee, harvested by angels on high and delivered by equitable-wage-earning teddy bears to your local campus coffee shop. Huggable tree not included.

Name: Ric Weiland
Most Recent Job: Board of Directors, Pride Foundation
Years at Microsoft: 13
Position: Lead Programmer, Project Leader
The project leader for Microsoft Works and lead programmer for the BASIC and COBOL language systems, Ric Weiland was described as a "brilliant programmer" and key to Microsoft's success by Paul Allen. Before his untimely passing in 2006, Weiland was one of the nation's most powerful LGBT activists, contributing over $30 million in his lifetime and bequeathing $65 million more while never seeking the limelight for his work.

Name: Charles Simonyi
Current Job: Space Tourist, Philanthropist
Years at Microsoft: 21
Position: Developer, Project Leader
The Hungarian-born developer Charles Simonyi oversaw the development of two of Microsoft's most profitable products, Word and Excel; started a successful intentional programming firm called Intentional Software; embarked on a ten-day mission to the International Space Station; and donated millions of dollars in grants to Stanford and Oxford Universities as well as the Seattle Symphony and Public Library. More importantly, he has been dating Martha Stewart for over fourteen years. I bet he's got some really beautiful doilies on his unfortunately-named super-yacht, Skat.

Name: Richard Brodie
Current Job: Professional Poker Player
Years at Microsoft: 5
Position: Developer
Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie was the original author of Microsoft Word, and subsequent creator of that squiggly red underline that makes fun of you when you forget how many Rs there are in "embarrassment." Now a professional poker player who has competed in the World Series of Poker, he was banned in May 2007 from all Harrah's locations in Nevada, California, and Arizona for a string of lucky wins on their video poker machines. The ban was lifted, but his "kind of a badass, at least for a former Microsoft employee and poker player" reputation persists.

Name: Rob Glaser
Current Job: Chairman and CEO of RealNetworks
Years at Microsoft: 10
Position: Vice President of Multimedia
Described during his time at Yale as politically "slightly to the left of Che Guevara," Rob Glaser has used his Microsoft earnings for both business and politics. Politically, he has supported Ralph Nader and Mother Jones, an ultra-liberal/commie/pinko magazine, among others. In the business world, he founded everyone's favorite company, RealNetworks, infuriating music-loving nerds for over a decade. I think that Eagle-Eye Cherry music video I tried to stream back in '98 is STILL buffering.

Name: Andrea Lewis
Current Job: Freelance Writer, Co-Founder of Richard Hugo House
Years at Microsoft: 5
Position: Technical Writer
Andrea Lewis was Microsoft's first technical writer, and one of the illustrious original eleven employees who took part in that deliciously dated and nerdy 1978 company photo below. (We bet Andrea knows how to spell "embarrassment.") She was integral in turning Microsoft's early techspeak into something normal folk could understand, helping the fledgling company get a foothold in the early '80s. Now a freelance fiction writer and journalist, she helped found the Richard Hugo House, a literary center in Seattle.

Name: Bob Greenberg
Post-Microsoft Job: Doll Magnate
Years at Microsoft: 4
Position: Developer
Though currently he is again working in the software industry, Bob Greenberg took a substantial detour from the tech world to create a pop-culture icon of the 1980s: the rotund, empty-eyed and nightmarish Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. The dolls' official website describes the birthing process: flying bunnies sprinkle cabbages with magic crystals, leading to the birth of these spherical-headed plastic terrors from said leafy vegetation. Normally I'd question a story like that, but it's right there, plain as day, on the internet.

Name: Gordon Letwin
Current Job: Environmental Philanthropist
Years at Microsoft: 15
Position: Project Developer
One of the two lead architects of the OS/2 operating system, Gordon Letwin was recognized by Bill Gates as his programming equal. He had the longest tenure of any of the original eleven Microsoft employees, other than Gates himself, and left the company in 1993 to spend time with his family and devote himself to green charitable causes. His other hobbies include making sure that his specific biographical details cannot be found online, as well as infuriating young writers who are just trying to find out which damn charities he's been helping.

Name: Bob Wallace
Most Recent Job: Psychedelics Champion
Years at Microsoft: 5
Position: Production Manager, Software Designer
The builder of Microsoft's first Pascal product and one of the company's original eleven employees, Bob Wallace left Microsoft in 1983 to start his own company, Quicksoft. There, he coined the term 'shareware' and created PC-Write, a popular pre-Word word processor. But Wallace is perhaps best known for his championing of psychedelic substances, funding organizations including the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the Heffter Research Institute, and Erowid. He passed away unexpectedly in 2002, hence the lack of silly drug-related jokes.

Name: Nathan Myhrvold
Current Job: Renaissance Man
Years at Microsoft: 13
Position: Chief Technology Officer
After his company, Dynamical Systems, was bought by Microsoft in 1986, Nathan Myhrvold served as Bill Gates' chief technology officer, heading Microsoft's massive research programs. After leaving the company, Myhrvold began even more thoroughly winning at life. He's a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer, published in a number of high-profile journals, and is involved with paleontological expeditions. He's also a French-trained master chef, and a winner of the world championship of barbecue in Memphis, Tennessee. He also runs a company called Intellectual Ventures, which manufactures patents for good ideas. The man can just about do anything, which can sometimes give others a sense of inadequacy about their own achievements. If it's any consolation, I hear he is, at best, a mediocre and even uninspired classical bassoonist.

Among this list of luminaries, quite a few were there for that first Microsoft family photo back in 1978:

If you'd like to talk about your favorite Microsoft Millionaires, any that weren't included in this sampling, by all means do it. This isn't a "Top 15" or anything, just a fun roundup of people doing cool things.

Nathan is talking about some of his patents, like a mini nuclear reactor. It's safe because most accidents in power plants are caused by human error, so automating this and using different fuels (like spent uranium and depleted rods from big plants) to make things less dangerous. I wish he'd talk more about their inventions but Walt and Nathan don't think it's appropriate to talk physics on stage.

Nathan and co. brainstorm ideas and license patents. Do they troll patent? They haven't.

They took the entire company to Iron Man to hear the line from the bad guy: "Just because you had an idea doesn't mean you own it." He hates that guy!

Walt is asking him about patent problems in tech, where terrible patents are being approved. Nathan says that originally, the patent office wouldn't approve software. Patents were ignored at first by software people, because speed was more important than "owning".

Nathan: "It was a good decision; many companies went huge and fair or foul said, hey, we're going to grow fast and copy everything we can whether it's patented or not. Big boys play rough." (Interesting perspective from an Ex Msft guy-B.L.)

By the way, Nathan has very entertaining voices, low and high. He'd be a great audiobook voice actor.

"You have to think that there's some technology that will take us from today to tomorrow, but there haven't been. We thought it was 3D, but it was not. No one has done that graphical treatment for office or research. Maybe that's a failure of imagination but no one has figured that out and I wish we would."

Mossberg asks about Apple's Multitouch on the iPhone, where Jobs claimed 200 patents in the device. Nathan suspects that the multitouch in the iPhone was done before, outside of both Apple and Microsoft, by someone who couldn't pull it off.

Calacanis had an interesting question: Is IV making an unethical land grab for patents? His answer was that he didn't know how to answer that question, except that people might complain if he has a lot of success, but no one was going to give him back his money. (Fair enough—B.L.)

Guy from Intel asks if an unintended consequence of IV's patent action and speculation is that big companies would keep extending patents to protect them. Nathan says it's BS. Most companies are doing R&D with a little R and a BIG D. They need to put more into the research. If people know they can spin out inventions, like they do divisions, they'll be more likely to do more research.

"If you're not doing something that is somewhat threatening to the apple cart, you're not doing something interesting."

[All Things D]

Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, "I can give you fifty examples of ideas they've had where, if you take just one of them, you'd have a startup company right there." Gates has participated in a number of invention sessions, and, with other members of the Gates Foundation, meets every few months with Myhrvold to brainstorm about things like malaria or H.I.V. "Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand," Gates said of the last such meeting. "The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic. There's this idea they have where you can track moving things by counting wing beats. So you could build a mosquito fence and clear an entire area. They had some ideas about super-thermoses, so you wouldn't need refrigerators for certain things. They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential. I'm not saying it necessarily is going to work. But it's just an example of something where you go, Wow."