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"If it was an LNG tanker seized, we're looking at something potentially catastrophic," said Candyce Kelshall, a specialist in maritime energy security at Blue Water Defence, a Trinidad-based company that provides training to governments and companies combating piracy. "An LNG tanker going up is like 50 Hiroshimas."

Seth

As opposed to enlightened McCain supporters such as yourself, right?

I tell them to picture themselves sick...or even worse, an emergency. And then, they have to basically go into the DMV to get evaluated and meds. I know how much fun it is for me to go in there, and wait for 3+ hrs to renew plates or drivers license, even when I DO have all the proper paperwork.

Stop kidding yourself, this happens now:
* Woman waited 19 hours in ER
* ER Waits Getting Longer

Why? Because poor people don't have insurance. This hurts you in 3 ways:
1. They don't get preventative care, so their ailments don't get treated until their become serious conditions.
2. They don't go to a normal doctor because they can't afford one, so they go to the ER where they cannot be turned away.
3. They can't afford to pay their ER visits, so the hospital has to write off their expenses in providing that (expensive) ER care, meaning less revenue available to expand or improve services. And/or they raise prices for everyone with insurance to cover these costs.

This is with private insurance. Government-sponsored insurance has its own problems, but if more people had their basic health care covered, there's a strong likelihood we could improve health care efficiency overall.

My nightmare is having an electric car during and evacuation for a hurricane.

You're obviously referring to Hurricane Rita which was an extreme case caused by lack of infrastructure and mass hysteria of people still reeling from Katrina weeks earlier. The infrastructure problem has been and continues to be addressed and except for a few hundred idiots who decided to ride out Ike in Galveston the evacuation went rather smoothly. Of course looking at your argument from another angle having an electric vehicle in said traffic could be better if they can get PV efficiencies up past 50%. Just pop a PV on your roof and hood and keep on truckin.

look at Houston, there are STILL areas there without power

That's Funny. Centerpoint Energy says the entire grid is back up. Although there are specific sites still without power because of extenuating circumstances. If you meant Galveston, Bolivar Peninsula, or Crystal Beach (not considered Houston area)then yeah it's kinda hard to get power to homes that no longer exist. Although they have enough power to have a Wedding/Brawl and a Biker Rally so things are looking up!

My nightmare is having an electric car during and evacuation for a hurricane.

You're obviously referring to Hurricane Rita which was an extreme case caused by lack of infrastructure and mass hysteria of people still reeling from Katrina weeks earlier. The infrastructure problem has been and continues to be addressed and except for a few hundred idiots who decided to ride out Ike in Galveston the evacuation went rather smoothly. Of course looking at your argument from another angle having an electric vehicle in said traffic could be better if they can get PV efficiencies up past 50%. Just pop a PV on your roof and hood and keep on truckin.

look at Houston, there are STILL areas there without power

That's Funny. Centerpoint Energy says the entire grid is back up. Although there are specific sites still without power because of extenuating circumstances. If you meant Galveston, Bolivar Peninsula, or Crystal Beach (not considered Houston area)then yeah it's kinda hard to get power to homes that no longer exist. Although they have enough power to have a Wedding/Brawl and a Biker Rally so things are looking up!

Amazingly on topic...

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2008/10/1&name=Pearls_Before_Swine

Are you also proud of being in the party of the deregulators then led us to this mess?

I wish I had mod points because this should not be moderated as Troll. It is all too true.

Dumbass partisans. This shit goes all the way back to Carter, with every president and congress in between having a hand in it. I could detail for you all the ways they helped, even. You think it was all done by Phil Gramm? Please. This mess predates the '99 deregulation. Which party has had the White House since '76? Which party has controlled congress since '76? That's right: BOTH OF THEM!

Are you also proud of being in the party of the deregulators then led us to this mess?

I wish I had mod points because this should not be moderated as Troll. It is all too true.

They already are using this technology. A Predator drone is being used to survey the hurricane damage in Texas. And another type of drone is being used to aid the Los Angeles police dept.

It's easy to nitpick that the most extreme predictions did not come to pass. If, on the other hand, you look at what most scientists have been saying, the melting is occurring faster than they predicted.

Yes, ice melts in the summer and freezes in the winter. But due to global warming, the amount of ice in the Arctic has been decreasing dramatically over the past few decades. In several years, the Arctic could be ice-free each September.

The effects of global warming are predicted to be most noticeable in the Arctic. This is because any warming will melt ice and snow. The reduced ice and snow cover reflects less sunlight back into space, meaning that more heat is trapped to melt yet more snow and ice, and so on. One of the first major predicted effects of global warming, besides the global mean temperature increasing, is that the Arctic ice will melt. Of course, these are exactly what we observe.

That the tropics are colder in these past few years is normal climate variation. You wouldn't notice the influence of global warming over a few years, as it would be a change of less than 0.1 degrees Celsius.

the Arctic ice refused to melt this summer. Does anyone remember the warning in June that the North Pole would be ice free?

Of course, their prediction was way off (as always). When someone realized how bad their prediction was, they fear monger some more with more dire warnings!

Remember that they have only been keeping sat. data for ice extent for a little over 3 decades, which of course is when the sun has been in a very active period.

If you don't do business with the credit card companies, you will have a very low credit rating. If you don't do business with the banks that use RFID bank cards, you might not have any bank at all in many areas of the country. Without a credit card or bank account you will find your options for owning a house or a car reduced to nil. In Canada, you cannot pay your taxes in cash. You cannot get an iPhone with cash. And yes, it is legal for a business to refuse cash purchases.

The credit/currency corporations are the key to being "in the system" and if you are "out of the system" you will be homeless or in government housing in short order. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it is an unfortunate reality. Perhaps you could lead a bank and credit card free life dealing only in Ithica Hours. But freedom from the financial corporate overlords is rare and hard won. Those overlords like RFID, so you will have RFID.

since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen

Life isn't fair.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/5972576.html

Simplicity made several baby bassinets that could apparently fold up into different designs. The bassinet had bars on it that were far enough apart (farther than federal regulations) that baby's head could fit through and get stuck, causing the baby to choke and die. They recalled one line of bassinets, and promptly went bankrupt from the cost. Another company, SFCA bought Simplicity out, and rather than recall the rest of the bassinets, they declared that they're not responsible for the products Simplicity produced (despite purchasing the company).

Nobody's "holding their breath" for this other company to do the recall. Pointing this fact out isn't "unfair" or "unbalanced", it's the truth. Fortunately, the retailers are "doing the right thing" even though they'll likely have to eat the cost of Simplicity's screwup themselves.

What was the line from Fight Club? About X being less than the cost of the recall? That bottom line is how many companies work, whether you are ashamed of it or not.

I actually knew a man who did this same thing. For reference http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1995_1294608

The guy, Hugo, in the story I linked was fired from his job for sexual molestation of a co-worker. Apparently he had been doing it for years. People that worked with him said that because he was such a good salesperson and made the company so much money that they helped cover for him. Apparently, he did it to the wrong person and his company finally fired him.

I know about this man from two different angles. First, my father and my father's girlfriend worked with him. An incident where this bastard tried to molest my father's girlfriend eventually led to his firing.

Second, in a strange twist of events, I worked with the guy as well. When he was fired he came to work at my company. At that time I had no idea of his involvement with my father and his girlfriend, nor the circumstances that led to his leaving his previous job. He mentioned layoffs, large oil and gas comapny, etc. He, however, had to know who I was because my father and I have the same name. In addition Hugo revealed he worked at the same installation my father worked at. I even described my father to him in hopes that they knew eachother. He feined ignorance of course.

Hugo and I worked together for a few months before he killed his wife, 2 young children, and babysitter. It wasn't till then that I learned of my father's involvement in his firing (my dad led the charge to get him fired, for obvious reasons) and the conduct that led to his firing. My impression of him after hearing all the details was that he was an egomaniacal control freak that had little regard for those around him, especially women. However, he maintained a well-meaning facade for the public by being active in his church and community. Eventually I came to the conclusion that his disregard for women was actually rooted in a sociopathic disregard of all people. I think he ultimately viewed his family as posessions he could do whatever he wanted with.

Before he got fired he was pretty much king of his domain. There was a constant stream of young women to pick from at work, he made phenomenal amounts of money, had the traditional wife and kids, and, according to some in the know, a 19 year old babysitter to have sex with whenever he wanted. Maybe he felt life was not living anymore without being able to get his way whenever he wanted. Whatever the reason, the scariest part is that I and many others worked right beside this powderkeg for months and he was able to pass among us and appeared to be a well adjusted, intelligent, humble, nice guy.

citation needed

teledildonics

The Miss Kanna case mod

The Katsuya Matsumura Anime girl computer case mod

Just like a woman

Real Doll

Boy Toy Dolls

Programmed for love

Therapeutic 'doll therapy' for dementia seems the most accepted by the medical community and is still controversial, there are other therapeutic studies going on, but I only a spent minute or two googling.

The price doesn't need to get high enough for the telco to dig it up, it only has to get high enough for thieves to steal it for recycling. It's already starting to happen in places.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5879297.html

thieves also break into foreclosed houses to loot the copper.

PI license only needed if you are investigating data for a 3rd party. No PI license needed for repairs. http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2008/07/bill_author_computer_techs_dont_need_a_privat.html

You really must have some form of user moderation. Slashdot is one example, but I know it confuses less savvy folks. The Houston Chronicle has finally gotten what I think is a reasonable and yet simple recommendation system ( http://www.chron.com/ ). It's amazing how I've come to expect user comments after stories. Sometimes they're even quite informative, insightful, or whatever. Sometimes in local news the people involved or witnesses may even post about inaccuracies in the article.

ambulances to not sit in the hospital parking lot for as long as hours because the ER won't accept patients.

What America do you come from? The one where ERs never go on diversion?

http://www.emsresponder.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=7430
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/homepage/x1315462910
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/06/what_if_your_am_1.html

Should I continue? Nah, you aren't going to give up on socialism.

And you're not going to give up on... well, whatever the hell it is you're smoking, are you?

Or if they aren't retarded, they'll go to one of the other 47 sites that publishes Dilbert daily. Here:

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2008/4/19&name=Dilbert

The Houston Chronicle has a good comics page, and I've never even been to Texas in my life. It's the Internet people, figure it the hell out already!

You're joking right? If you consider that a proof then I've got a surprise for you.

They are not hibernating either rover.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5649567.html

Most of the people taking advantage of this are going to be small-medium businesses who will be milking the free bandwidth, not lower income families.

I'm not sure about this particular area, but other low-income areas in Houston just happen to have high-priced lofts right next door. Those people will be using the free wifi, too.

By the way, this is a project from the same mayor who wanted to evict a facility for the mentally retarded.

Hey, argue against the dictionary all you want. :) Examples of usage from media outlets, just in the headlines alone, and ignoring other uses of the phrase and puns (such as "Home pool tables cue up lots of family fun"):

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/19/business/ptpogue20.php ("Cue up the music, choose the rooms")
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080212/LIFE/802120309/-1/LIFE03 ("Cue up your appetite")
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/13/business/video.php ("Bank internship? Time to cue up the video")
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1492913/20041021/handsome_boy_modeling_school.jhtml ("Handsome Boy Modeling School Cue Up LP #2")
http://blogs.chron.com/franblinebury/2008/02/yo_adrian_cue_up_the_rocky_the.html ("You, Adrian! Cue up the Rocky Theme!")
http://mediawiredaily.com/2007/01/cue-up-sound-of-cbs-cash-register-ka.html ("Cue up sound of CBS cash register!")
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117853509.html ("MTV arms cue up 'Unplugged' on Net")

Need me to keep going? Just because you haven't heard the phrase doesn't make it any less real, or any less in the dictionary.

That really doesn't sound likely, if they had trouble understanding the rodeo why were they there in the first place? Boycotting something you don't go to anyway doesn't make sense.

So I looked it up:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5573321.html

I don't know where you heard that (right wing media playing on people's prejudices no doubt) but you might want to consider the propriety of that source in future. They threatened a boycott because the rodeo was hiring non-Tejanos to perform at a Tejano cultural event, no mention of anyone printing or speaking spanish.

Not if life saving drugs stop being developed, because the pharmaceutical companies spend millions proving a particular chemical is safe and effective and then get massively undercut by a third party manufacturer producing the same chemical via a different process.

It doesn't go like that, pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than they do on research. Not only that but government does a lot of research as well. According to this, "An alternative to pharmaceutical patents", in Europe the bulk of research is paid for by government. Now I don't know if that's true but in the US the federal government pays millions for research as well. An excellent example of this is Taxol. The NCI, National Institute of Cancer, part of the NIH or National Institutes of Health a government agency spend $183 million in taxpayers' money to develop Taxol. What did the NCI do with it? After spending all that money to develop and test the drug as a cancer treatment the NCI "sold", gave it away is more like it, all the data needed to win FDA approval of Taxol as a drug to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $43 million. In other words taxpayers paid more the $140 more than they got. And how much does BMS make selling Taxol? In 2000 BMS made almost $1 billion and they were expected to make more each year thereafter. Now I don't know how many doses are needed for one treatment with Taxol but while BMS has been able to lower the cost of making one dose to under $1 a full treatment costs a few thousand dollars to someone needing it or their insurance.

Ron Paul is not going to surrender, and John McCain will not take the Republican nomination without the fight of his life. Your donations and work as Precinct Leaders are needed now more than ever. Thank you all for everything you've done so far -- the revolution has just begun.

That is not an artile. That is a blog entry that copy and pasted a paragraph and stole a photo from an article. This is the article. Notice the difference: The blog contains a whopping 13 words, none of which actually relate to the story. The article, on the other hand, is a full page with lots of information and in-context quotes.

Everything I said here applies yet again. If the purpose of the Internet is to serve as an open forum for disseminating information, then the typical blog is the antithesis of that purpose; the worst thing to happen to the Internet since AOL.
=Smidge=

Seemingly Texas. (Saying 'agreement to protect young users against sexual predators doesn't go far enough')

Even a small leak at this plant can kill many workers or even people in a nearby town without them even realizing they should run away for safety.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/5414105.html

the list of who stuck their necks out too far in 2007

The guy killed by the tiger at the SF zoo on December 27 didn't make the list?

Media throws a hook filled with sensationalism... everyone bites. Houston news agencies are well known for making a bigger story out of something. Not to mention the fact that they've been gunning for HPD for a good year now. It's funny that this "wasn't approved by the FAA" considering the test was specifically FOR the FAA and not Houston PD. Read the another article from the Houston news that's less "end of the world" than channel 2.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5323075.html

See also my point #5 below that addresses the original slashdot post about scaling/aggregating wind farm output (T. Boone Pickens).

Here is some more info:
1. Texas is the largest wind power producer in the world, now exceeding California and all other countries.
2. western Texas has the majority of Texas wind power, but there is some developing along the 1400 mile coast line as well

3. Texas is the leading state for power deregulation, including a crucial but little-known piece of deregulation that permits a power generating company to market and sell power directly to end users. Why is this important? Because wind power is both economically uncompetitive while being potentially perceived as a "premium product." Thus, risk-taking small and large wind power companies can try their hand at direct marketing to end users using premium pricing, a market exploratory process that the large, incumbent, and previously government-protected-monopoly utilities, have thus far in history proven uninterested in attempting. And it is working - Austin and Texas has the highest rate of voluntary adoption of "green power" (that is, premium-priced) in the nation, and growing.

4. Texas also, (regrettably - but favorably at least in the short term for wind power) still taxes its consumers to subsidize wind power contributed to the grid. Over time, with variable pricing and demand-shifting, wind power may be able to stand on its own. The immediate question is whether, absent voluntary consumer choice (which might make wind viable anyway), a government should tax its poorest energy users to redistribute to its corporations in this manner. Left for the reader to answer.

5. Entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is one of the world's largest and most interesting wind power and infrastructure visionaries. For example, he is building the world's largest wind farm west of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex as well as directing hundreds of thousands of acres of water rights into productive use in north Texas. The wind farm is notable because it anticipates the useful conclusion of the Stanford research - basic economies of scale to variable-producing wind farms. This is because Pickens's wind farm may be large enough to exhibit some of the characteristics of output-averaging that is the point of the paper. Also interesting to note is the fact that Pickens must build a brand new mega-transmission capability to get this energy to relevant markets.

6. Unfortunately, no state including Texas has deregulated enough to permit proper competition in transmission. Thus, Texas's transportation grid, while adequate, cannot itself become a creative contributor to ongoing electricity solutions but instead must be dragged forward by Pickens and other entrepreneurs, rather than being owned and quickly updated by them. It is the lesson of the Railroads all over again that were subsidized and owned by governments and ultimately bankrupted and beaten by the non-subsidized competitor (read your Thomas DiLorenzo American history). Further competitive problems and parallels between the corrupted (by state intervention and subsidy) railroads and the electricity grid are left to the reader.

Resources:

Counting vote won't take long / Two hold key to $2.5 billion water pipeline in Panhandle
- http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2007_4453835

Knowledge Problem
Commentary on Economics, Information and Human Action
- http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/archives/cat_electricity.html

All physorg does is reprint articles from news feeds and press releases, and they ALWAYS remove all links and online references from the original story. It's a "link tarpit".

In this particular case the story doesn't seem to have had much to wipe, but a little googling would have gotten you versions that didn't promote physorg.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/oct/21/102106464.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/5232431.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_sc/russia_s_gateway_to_space

Some transportation companies like Skybus and Megabus have come up with an answer to the high price of tickets: sell the first few at a very low price, and sell the rest at incrementally higher prices. Then even the poor can buy tickets, if they get in line early enough.

First, thanks for a great site. I read something about "20 hour days" keeping the site afloat, and I believe it was required. For those of us who enjoy it daily (along with Dwight Silverman's column) it can be a real lifeline, especially when work is ultra-boring.

Just a few questions:

1. You oversaw the "internet revolution." Beyond Al Gore inventing it, beyond the dot-com hype, beyond the spam and the sockpuppets, what do you think is the future of networked communication? Is it the cloud OS and social networking, or are we rounding another bend?

2. You've mentioned liking Postgres DBs. What other underrated hardware and software do you enjoy and employ on a regular basis?

3. What emergent technologies do you watch?

4. In the Wired interview, you mention a balance between wise crowd tendencies and dumb crowd tendencies:

"When you're building a system like this you're balancing the wisdom of the crowds versus the tyranny of the mob. Sometimes a crowd is really smart, but some things don't work so well by committee. Crowds work when you have a tightly knit group of people with similar interests, but when you have a loosely knit community you get 'Man Gets Hit in Crotch With Football.'"

What have you learned is the balance of this duality? For all of its attempts to be crowd-wisdom propelled, Slashdot does lean on the theory of exceptional individuals, because it has picked editors to filter what makes it to the front page, which cuts down on the "site-rhymes-with-bigg" tendency to put rosy garbage on the front page. Are you satisfied with the balance of your responses to whatever psychological fulcrum keeps a crowd wise and not mobbish?

5. What if any fiction authors do you enjoy?

6. I'm a technical writer, and am curious what you think about the current state of software and hardware documentation. Is it getting better? What are its common failings? Does anyone read it? Will single-sourcing (documentation that appears in print, online help, web sites, flash cards and text messages but uses the same text) change documentation's effectiveness radically?

7. In the CNET article, you talk about Slashdot as a community.

"But to some of our readers, it's a community that's here to discuss issues that are relevant to this community. There is a lot of value. The bulk of our content comes from other people. There are 6,000 or 7,000 comments on a busy day that other people write and just a dozen stories of just a paragraph or two that we actually generate, that are ours."

As you started out in BBSs, you probably had a prexisting idea of this being important to a resource on technology. Why do you think this is?

8. In the same interview, you talk about the ability of low-tech websites to take on big roles:

"I think that it really comes down to the content. If you have content people want, they will tolerate a system that is inferior. Now our system is solid, but back in the day, it wasn't. Look at eBay: That system is the most hodgepodge and clumsy user interface that you will ever find. People use it because it was first and it worked."

In the world of advertising, people call this branding. What do you think Slashdot's brand represents, and is it something IT workers will always have in common?

9. In the Network Administrator interview, you compare Slashdot to bulletin board systems favorably.

"Strangely not that far. It's all just a matter of scale. At some level it's all identical."

You mean in twenty years, not much has changed except the technology? I'd like to hear more on this if you find it compelling.

10.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5094200. html

One astute commentator wrote:

A better idea might be to sell repeaters (and bandwidth) to businesses at a discount rate, so that they can give their customers free public wi-fi. If the City of Houston chipped in for a few of its parks and libraries, we'd be basically complete, since there are almost no public spaces in America that aren't businesses or government institutions.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5094200. html

One astute commentator wrote:

A better idea might be to sell repeaters (and bandwidth) to businesses at a discount rate, so that they can give their customers free public wi-fi. If the City of Houston chipped in for a few of its parks and libraries, we'd be basically complete, since there are almost no public spaces in America that aren't businesses or government institutions.

The governor just commuted his sentence to life:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5095674. html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5094200. html

The deal in Houston to blanket the area with wi-fi has also gone up on the blocks, though Mayor Bill White has wrung a $5mil payment from Earthlink. I'm guessing this one isn't going to go ahead either.

Comcast and ATT must be laughing now.

Here is the news today. I know the link is in the blog, but it's far down the page and people might miss it:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5092403. html

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2007/08/t he_earthlink_wifi_saga_waiting_for_the_other.html Interesting commentary from Houston Chronicle technology writer Dwight Silverman. His suggestion is to socialize municipal Wi-Fi and have the city run it.

The proper phrase is TIA: This is Africa

Haven't you heard? The Weekly World News is ceasing publication.

The "environmentalists make the Shuttle blow up!" meme is a Limbaugh lie;