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Funny, I have multiple websites that use the Maps API and I've yet to see a bill from Google for usage or the functionality made unavailable. What crack pipe are you smoking?

READ THE FUCKING MANUAL noob.

The "love hotel" symbol is part of the Emoji set. These are a semi-standardized set of emoticons that had widespread use in Japan. It was Google that proposed their inclusion in Unicode. http://sites.google.com/site/unicodesymbols/Home/emoji-symbols

Three alternatives to RDF used by Google:

http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/index.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2009/05/12/google-support-rdfa-and-microformats/
http://schema.org/

Microsoft uses OData as well as Schema:

http://www.odata.org/

OWL is a way to write schemas, making the logical alternative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDF_Schema

Popular schemas include everything in this list. Schemas are not necessarily compatible and tools are usually written for a specific schema.

http://139.91.183.30:9090/RDF/Examples.html

Define "not actually in", because after a quick search:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations/

We see they have an office in Australia, which was the domain used in the summary. And quite a few around the globe, of particular note is China, which is so often the center of discussions like these. Also, Thailand, which I believe was brought up with regards to Twitter and blocking posts critical of their king.

Are you suggesting that because their corporate HQ isn't there that "they" aren't there? Or are you suggesting that they don't _need_ to be in those locations, and so could pull out?

Finally, I'll note that you said "enforcing questionable laws". Don't you mean "evil laws"? I mean, if obeying the law is evil, then surely that law is evil, right? Or does it only become evil when enforced by Google because they aren't entire present where the law matters?

I dunno. This always gets so confusing. Like, why isn't Google evil for taking down ads for Canadian pharmaceuticals at the request of the FDA? Actually, I seem to recall people were saying they were evil for allowing the ads in the first place. Maybe it's that HQ thing again... That "good" is upholding American (oh, like specifically the USofAmerican) laws and ideals and "evil" is upholding the laws of other countries in those countries because their HQ is in the USA?

If Google does not have operations in a particular country, why should they care about that country's censorship laws?

Good point, but it's still quite a lot of countries to care about.

for a lot of people facebook is the new contact list and has replaced email for most communication. my gmail is my spam/marketing honeypot these days and social networks are used for communication.but then again geeks and techies are usually the last ones to GET trends like this.

And those who are sucked into a fad or bubble are often the last to admit that they were wrong.

This time is different

In addition to Facebook being far more spammy than any email I've ever owned, the fact that it is popular with vast numbers of people does not mean that they can turn that into significant revenue - enough to justify $100 billion valuation would be quite remarkable when they've already jumped the shark.

from the leaked financials last year facebook is making money.

Gosh, I wonder who leaked those? I wonder if they were even real or subtly tweaked? Frankly I think Facebook will be about as successful longterm as MySpace, Geocities, eWorld, Yahoo and a bunch of other 'portals' which were due to replace the internet any time soon before the last tech bubble, but even if it is way more successful than those, why should it replace email? Given their public hostility to the concept of privacy, why would you possibly want to trust Zuckerberg and Facebook with your private correspondence?

This IPO is not a game-changer, it's not the start of a new paradigm, and it's not worth $100b, it's business as usual for Goldman Sachs, who see their role as extracting as much real money from the economy as possible while putting in as little as possible themselves - it seems there's an endless line of patsies who are willing to fund their robber-baron lifestyle. Good luck ever getting your money back if you invest in this sucker's game.

Judgement, yes. But not in a negative way really. It's also not an insult. Moore knows what he looks like and he want to look like this for a reason. I was just pointing out the obvious difference between him and us masses. This man lives in his head and spends much less time on our "plane of existence" than I. (Many genius people do.) Or compare him to Gandalf to the rest of the inhabitants of Middle-Earth, if you can do without a nerdgasm.

My question of "have you seen him lately" was light-hearted and tongue in cheek as was most of my post.

Further, I challenge you to gander at this google image search of "alan moore" and not find the humor. If King Theoden doesn't make you laugh.. the Lego Man should.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sugexp=lttmoc&cp=23&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=alan+moore+bio+watchmen&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1194&bih=723&wrapid=tljp132812956903400&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=I6YpT8TZMajm0QHVvtisAg#um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=alan+moore&oq=alan+moore&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=59570l59570l0l60487l1l1l0l0l0l0l142l142l0.1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=fcb8f53f3c5eaa37&biw=1194&bih=723

There's a bug in WebKit on the Mac that stops font fallback working properly.

Reported by me in Chrome, reported up the chain to Apple.

It works fine in Chrome for Linux, so it's something weird and Mac-specific Apple will probably need to fix.

What exactly is your problem w/ marketplace, commercial linux or vendor?

They only care about making money, and have their agenda which is totally different from the one of the users. The kind of result is the infamous Android market place with GPL violations all over the place, or Canonical displeasing all of their users with Unity, or RedHat destroying a once good Gnome, simply because they have money. Such thing wouldn't have happened if these projects were community driven.

Problem w/ Linux is that no company has figured out a way to make money out of GPL software

You're a funny guy. First, it's quite the opposite. The problem is that so many company does, and don't contribute back. See how many are violating the GPL and not releasing the kernel sources (for example, in the Android side...).

which is why even Red Hat is struggling

The stock exchange doesn't agree with your view, with a doubling of market value in 2 years only: http://www.google.com/finance?q=red+hat

Apple, otoh, made an XNU based FreeBSD which they've customized for only a few closed platforms, but which has an ecosystem adequate enough to support what their customers need. The OS is affordable, but they're not stupid enough to throw open control of it to the 'community'.

How much you are distorting reality is fascinating. What happened is that they used to have an open Darwin (the kernel of MacOS), but after few years, they realized that absolutely no contribution were made, and probably never would in the foreseeable future, so they decided to go back to a closed source model. And what Apple did, mind you, is quite a bit more than just "customization"...

This sounds like the author has never heard of the word smarmy before.
Define: smarmy

Adjective: Ingratiating and wheedling in a way that is perceived as insincere or excessive; unctuous.
Synonyms: sycophantic - adulatory - oily - obsequious - fawning

Define: smarm

Verb: Behave in an ingratiating way in order to gain favor: "I smarmed my way into the air force".
Noun: Ingratiating behavior: "it takes smarm and confidence".

Mitt Romney looks like someone who forced himself to smile so long that it is stuck on his face like a sticker. The guy probably sleeps with that grin. It looks weird and painful. It screams "used car salesman" which is the essence of smarmy. I suspect that everyone realizes this, but many don't seem to understand that this is a common shared concept and there is a word for it.

This sounds like the author has never heard of the word smarmy before.
Define: smarmy

Adjective: Ingratiating and wheedling in a way that is perceived as insincere or excessive; unctuous.
Synonyms: sycophantic - adulatory - oily - obsequious - fawning

Define: smarm

Verb: Behave in an ingratiating way in order to gain favor: "I smarmed my way into the air force".
Noun: Ingratiating behavior: "it takes smarm and confidence".

Mitt Romney looks like someone who forced himself to smile so long that it is stuck on his face like a sticker. The guy probably sleeps with that grin. It looks weird and painful. It screams "used car salesman" which is the essence of smarmy. I suspect that everyone realizes this, but many don't seem to understand that this is a common shared concept and there is a word for it.

The possibility is being discussed in Swedish media (via google translate), in fact they specifically mention Google and YouTube. There's nothing specific in the ruling that clearly says that they wouldn't be liable, basically it seems to criminalize all sites that make copyright infringement easier and faster. The wording is very broad and vague, maybe they didn't see anything worth reviewing with regards to TPB but they certainly didn't make things clear on where illegal services end and legal services begin, or even what separates them.

Okay, 20% time still exists. Eliminating projects that resulted from it just means those engineers can move on to new ideas or join other projects.

Wow, you don't understand human, aren't you ?
Let's talk about cognitive dissonance.
On one hand, Google encourages people to start new ideas, during 20% of their time.
On the other hand, Google cuts the new ideas, and buys external companies that have new concepts.

How do you think the engineers feel ? Of course, they won't trust Google for encouraging them of having ideas in their 20% time. If they have an interesting idea, the best way is to quit Google, set up a startup and sell it to Google. Of course, who would bother giving ideas to Google, when you see what they do with that.

What Google shows now is that they don't care their internal innovation. Basically, nothing good can come up from Google, so they'll buy any kind of technology from outside.

I am a software developer, I do agile development. Guess what? The engineers can do all of what you just listed too! Not having that BS middle management means we get paid more although we have more responsibilities but those responsibilities were already foisted upon us when something went wrong anyway!

I'm an agile developer and coach. It seems that you didn't discover the hidden truth of agile: management doesn't want to be agile.
Management is the new bureaucracy: you try to live without them, and they try to justify their existence.

I bet that you are using Scrum, Scrum is a gift for management, since the team manages itself ! The team changes, but why would the management change, when they can continue to work with their old ways.
Read the interesting article here:
http://targetprocess.com/rightthing.html

BTW, try to read William Edwards Deming: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edwards_Deming
He's the father of agile, back in 1950. And nobody listened to him until 1990 !

Like... when the Israeli's held American's hostage for over a year?

Amazing how the Tehran hostage crisis manages to completely shut off any thinking sense. America waged war on Vietnam, Ho Chi Min totally humiliated the US, and here we are a few decades later with diplomatic relations with Vietnam, all buddy-buddy.

More generally, Israel downed an American navy ship, and waged a terrorist campaign against US interests in Egypt. So I guess the US should nuke Israel?

The fact is, if you want to keep diplomatic relations, you'll find a way to do so, even if someone shoots civilian aircraft down (like the USSR did to KAL007, or the US did to an Iran civilian aircraft.

Or like in 1988 , during the Israeli mass executions of political prisoners?

Regarding the 1988 executions: a quick Google search shows you're referencing the execution of
People's Mujahideen. Interestingly, Wikipedia says the source for this is none other than the People's Mujahideen. The People's Mujahideen is (from a NPOV) a terrorist group (a group that uses violence to achieve political aims).

Or when the Israeli's stood in huge crowds, cheering, as their leader crowed about nuking the US?

Sorry, what? That never happened. Or are you referring to their President quoting Khomeini talking about the current Israeli government vanishing from the pages of time (like the USSR did)? If so, how do you get from there to nuking the US?

Or the 2 year detention of US hikers by the Israeli's?

Hardy har har. Hikers. I hear there's some great hiking to be done on the border between one unstable country (Iraq), and another one that's been targeted as an "Axis of Evil" by the US (Iran). After they get done with this hiking tour, I think they'll be checking out the sights in Chechnya, then the Korea Demilitarized Zone after that. Some great hiking in Kashmir, too.

Try this on for size: Iranian "tourists" found "lost" in the Arizona or Texas desert. "We were just hiking--honest, officer!" Do you think the American public would accept a weaselly excuse like that? Why do you expect other countries to do so?

there was no "new strain of the virus", .... here you go, mandatory link to non-brain-damaged content ... http://www.virology.ws/2011/12/06/ferreting-out-influenza-h5n1/

From your link: "A laboratory in the Netherlands has identified a lethal influenza H5N1 virus strain that is transmitted among ferrets."

The whole argument from your link about it not being as lethal as H5N1 is pure speculation - as he admits, we don't know transmissibility of the strain in humans, because we won't do that experiment. His basic argument is the virulence of the virus in humans is reduced by having the virus be transmitted through non-human hosts. This is not necessarily true - it depends on what species the virus is moving between. If a virus makes the leap from something further from humans (eg fish) to something closer to humans (eg pigs) then it becomes more dangerous to us. His argument may be correct in the case where you have an organism adapted very well to humans and you expose it to non-human transmission selective pressures, then it will probably evolve and become less adapted to humans. But this is not always the situation.

He also says:

Nature is far better at producing viruses that can kill – to think that we can duplicate the enormous diversity and selection pressures that occur in the wild is a severe case of scientific hubris.

Maybe he is right (at the moment) about manually targetted changes - but we are only going to get better at this over time. He has also ignored the practice of laboratory evolution (or synthetic evolution), where nature is used in the lab to evolve or enhance certain characteristics of organisms. For a far-out plan, some rogue biologists could expose humans, see which ones are infected and die first, and then infect others with flu samples taken from those bodies. After repeating for some generations, this selective pressure may well produce a highly lethal and highly transmissible variant.

I'm gonna spell this out for you very slowly since, like all people IT, you have an IQ smaller than your shoe size.

Current
Adjective: Belonging to the present time; happening or being used or done now.

most
Adjective: Greatest in amount or degree: "they've had the most success"; "they had the most to lose".

Profitable
Adjective: (of a business or activity) Yielding profit or financial gain. Beneficial; useful.
Synonyms: lucrative - gainful - advantageous - beneficial - useful

Now lets look at some data.
Company: Current Net Income
Apple: $13.06 Billion
Exxon Moblie: $10.33 Billion
Chevron: $7.829 Billion
BHP: N/A (However they made ~22.3 Billion last year, No where near the top for most profitable enterprise)

I'm gonna spell this out for you very slowly since, like all people IT, you have an IQ smaller than your shoe size.

Current
Adjective: Belonging to the present time; happening or being used or done now.

most
Adjective: Greatest in amount or degree: "they've had the most success"; "they had the most to lose".

Profitable
Adjective: (of a business or activity) Yielding profit or financial gain. Beneficial; useful.
Synonyms: lucrative - gainful - advantageous - beneficial - useful

Now lets look at some data.
Company: Current Net Income
Apple: $13.06 Billion
Exxon Moblie: $10.33 Billion
Chevron: $7.829 Billion
BHP: N/A (However they made ~22.3 Billion last year, No where near the top for most profitable enterprise)

I'm gonna spell this out for you very slowly since, like all people IT, you have an IQ smaller than your shoe size.

Current
Adjective: Belonging to the present time; happening or being used or done now.

most
Adjective: Greatest in amount or degree: "they've had the most success"; "they had the most to lose".

Profitable
Adjective: (of a business or activity) Yielding profit or financial gain. Beneficial; useful.
Synonyms: lucrative - gainful - advantageous - beneficial - useful

Now lets look at some data.
Company: Current Net Income
Apple: $13.06 Billion
Exxon Moblie: $10.33 Billion
Chevron: $7.829 Billion
BHP: N/A (However they made ~22.3 Billion last year, No where near the top for most profitable enterprise)

Please excuse me for being pedantic...

I used to work in a Cessna repair shop, and I attempted to build an experimental airplane once many, many years ago (I eventually gave up and bought an airplane instead -- I'm more pilot than mechanic). The most common thickness of aluminum in the aircraft I am familiar with (i.e., most piston-engine, general aviation airplanes) is 0.040 inches thick. According to Google, 0.040 inch is about 1.02mm. That's an order of magnitude off from your estimate of 0.1mm. This in no way, however, diminishes your point that it is science that allowed us to design the airliners that we use to travel in an inherently hostile environment.

Disclaimer: Yes, I understand that a single-engine, piston-powered Cessnas or the Sonerai II that I tried to build or the Falcon XP that I currently own is a far cry from a 747, MD-80 or Airbus A320. It stands to reason, however, that the skins on a monocoque fuselage would be even thicker on an airliner than a Cessna. Any ex Boeing/McDonald-Douglas/Lockheed/Airbus employees available to confirm or deny this?

It's also technically illegal most of the time.

No it is not. A simple Google search for "left turn intersection" will show you this in the first few hits. A few of the top hits are the actual code in states like Indiana and Texas where you can see this is the case. The other links are forum discussions on this because it is such a common misunderstanding.

As for intersections on yellow/red lights. Tickets for people who entered an intersection on yellow and then the light turned red are almost always upheld in the end (when the police officer bothers to show up).

That is not true, because it is not illegal. See aforementioned links.

Google's current CEO, Larry Page, took Steve Jobs' advice to heart and is cutting the bloat (e.g. Google Wave, Google Labs, etc. have all been cut in the last several months). That means less 20%-time projects from engineers who have no experience with product development and more polished projects from the top management and PMs.

Where do I even start with this? Okay, 20% time still exists. Eliminating projects that resulted from it just means those engineers can move on to new ideas or join other projects. Saying 'less 20%-time projects' doesn't really make any sense. That perk still exists ... it's possible his strategy was to disassemble those bigger teams so that they get more engineer hobby projects to pick from. If Page was taking Steve Jobs' advice, the 20 percent perk would be eliminated completely and Page would be walking around instructing people what the consumer wants.

The fact that you think that engineers have 'no experience with product development and more polished projects from the top management and PMs' makes me think you are either management or you live in a fantasy world where management has tricked you. I am a software developer, I do agile development. Guess what? The engineers can do all of what you just listed too! Not having that BS middle management means we get paid more although we have more responsibilities but those responsibilities were already foisted upon us when something went wrong anyway! What does 'more polished projects' mean exactly? Who has always done the polishing and development? It wasn't management and I've often found their direction is a coin flip.

There's been some really promising work in the direction of OCR-like problems lately. Here's an algorithm that can efficiently learn a small dictionary of symbols (like letters) and decompose a signal into elements that fit within this "low-rank" dictionary plus sparse noise (bugs squashed on the text?) plus Gaussian noise: https://sites.google.com/site/godecomposition/.

It's not literally magical, but it's super-duper awesome (an no, I'm not an author of this one) and it should contribute to the minor revolution in signal processing (compressed sensing & low-rank matrix completion) that's been gaining momentum since about 2005. If our machines can learn features efficiently and robustly from natural images, many industries are in for a wild shake-up. More on this minor revolution is available at http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/.

These algorithms are part of the reason why self-driving cars are starting to work, and I have the excited feeling like we're on the cusp (read, next ten years or so) of a sea change in our ability to have machines able to understand and interact with the physical world with a dash of common sense.

... and by "minor app developer" you mean a Stanford Research Institute spinoff, where it was created from over 10 years of AI research by DARPA on the CALO/PAL projects, which were in fact the largest AI projects in history? You might remember DARPA from some of their other projects. Like ARPANET amongst others. If you expect to equal 10 years of DARPA AI research and development in a 3-week coding project, well good luck with that.

By minor app developer I was referring more to the fact that others than Apple could easily have bought it as well ($150m is pocket change), if they found it that revolutionary. It is cool technology, implementation and marketing, but not that far off what others have that people are making it out to be.

The decades of world leading research into "AI", voice/natural language processing, machine learning and natural user interfaces from the likes of IBM, Microsoft Research and more recently Google, and others, is hardly a 3-week coding project. But if that is how you'd like to think the technology behind Siri stack up to what others have, be my guest.

Creates reality for the dreamer.
A joke is a threat.
Doodling on a napkin is interpreted as a plan to attack. Threats are dreamed up and millions suffer.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727

In this case - aren't they loosing their ticket purchase price, reservations and vacation days?
I just hope that there is some legal process to sue.

It's from the Google+ stream of Andy Rubin

Elop should just be fired by the shareholders

If the shareholders are really going to fire Elop, they should first fire the Board that hand-selected him.

Perhaps the shareholders that did "get it" decided to leave in droves and never come back [1]... voting with your (lack of) participation is sometimes the most powerful message you can send.

[1] https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NOK

It would have taken you a second to find out yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=apple+engineered+to+fail&btnG=Search&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=apple+planned+obsolescence&psj=1&oq=apple+planned+obsolescence&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v1g-b2&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=4277l7438l0l7568l26l22l0l0l0l1l354l3426l6.10.3.2l21l0&fp=1&biw=1079&bih=850&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&cad=b

Apple mobile devices are sealed shut, you're not supposed to replace the batteries yourself. They're not supposed to last.

Well, ideally, but a big part of the point of a lecture is to let you know what it is that you don't understand.

If you think about it for a while, you would realize that this should be the other way around (and may educational reforms try to get students and instructors on board with this also). The instructor time is the precious commodity that you should be trying to get the most value out of. The text is always available. If the student does the pre-reading they can come to class with an idea of what it is that they need the instructor's insight for, and can ask useful questions during the lecture and participate at a much higher level compared to if the lecture is their first exposure to the material.

There are entire fields of instructional practices based on this type of "just in time teaching", where the well prepared students attend classes unfocussed on the things they did not learn from the text.

http://www.google.com/search?q="just+in+time+teaching"

Read the text before the class and everything is confusing - but can become clear in class. Don't read the text before the class and everything in the class is new and there is much less opportunity to learn from the class in the ways that can best be accomplished in the class format.

Your last sentence threw a wrench in the works, otherwise I would have come on much harder:

> fair use for what purpose?
Well, basically for the main purpose for which the 1st amendment was meant: namely, political speech.

If there's any purpose at all to free speech as enshrined in the Bill of Rights, it's for political speech. Quoting a newsclip verbatim regarding one's political opponent seems to be at the very heart of what speech is supposed to be for--talking about politics. Think about it: you just fought a revolution against the Brits, and the new laws are going to ban political pamphleteering of the kinds that won the revolution?

Finally, the copyright clause is part of the original constitution. When an amendment passes, it amends all parts of the Constitution necessary for it to function. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_implied_repeal) The 1st amendment amends the original constitution. Ergo, the 1st amendment amends and (trumps) the copyright clause.

This is an important point, and I'd like to ask mods to mod this up, and spread it wide: the 1st amendment amends the copyright clause.

How about try Gmail Motion BETA?

... or BlueWho.

2006 numbers (WHO) are more like USA - $6,719 ; France - $3,420

So still about the same ratio, but a lot higher now.

ACTA is a trade agreement pushed by the US government rather heavy handedly

For those who think this is or would like to paint it as an exaggeration.

What's the story behind the story here? Why was that website defaced? Did the person defacing it have some message of importance or was is just the action of a competitor or someone bitter for personal reasons?

The mass media often focus on unimportant stories and provide too little detail on those that do matter. Shouldn't we try to focus on getting the bigger picture and more depth?

Since Google relates to this story is an opportunity to bring up another deeper issue of importance. Sometimes finding out what is going on in the world requires digging deeper than what the commercial giants publish. Following a story globally is helped by the ability to translate pages or paragraphs, do searches in foreign languages, and more. In the spirit of being good not evil, Google tools helping with that is certainly appreciated. For democracy to function effectively we must be educated and informed. We certainly have a better chance at sane global policies, interaction, understanding and peace with the help of tools that work well with other languages. So it concerns me that Google has broken access to tools using its translation services. The non-commercial (free) third party OS X Text Translator version 1.2 widget ( http://sites.google.com/site/jobmlys/ ), which right on its face gives "Powered by Google" credit, no longer works. It was more powerful and provided much more understandable results than what Apple bundles and I found it invaluable in getting a deeper understanding of many things going on in the last year or so.

Google if you are listening, instead of effectively killing such tools, work to enhance them and what new ones can do. For instance imagine how useful it could be to combine your translation ability with OCR that worked on photos from the net, PDFs, and captures from video. Whether it be for understanding what's in the news, what some individual says in that youtube message, or reading a photo of vacuum tube specs in Russian to make an audio amp with surplus parts, your tools can be REALLY appreciated in helping with deeper understanding. Doing so would promote global understanding and go a long ways, with me at least, in feeling that Google is good not evil. Maybe one day you'll provide speech (audio) search/translation tools too. I think the world can be a more stable and positive place if we have deeper understanding and are better connected. Please help!!!

I presently own a $2700 Toshiba (133 Mhz/144mb RAM) that I bought brand new in 1997 that doesn't crash very often at all, and its original battery still gives reasonable service. Even the CMOS battery hasn't quit yet. It's not my primary machine, but I do like to show it off to visitors.

And I'm also aware that price fixing runs rampant in this business (like far too many others)... to the point where they blow up their factories when the market becomes too saturated, and of course the exploitation of natural disasters doesn't hurt.

I presently own a $2700 Toshiba (133 Mhz/144mb RAM) that I bought brand new in 1997 that doesn't crash very often at all, and its original battery still gives reasonable service. Even the CMOS battery hasn't quit yet. It's not my primary machine, but I do like to show it off to visitors.

And I'm also aware that price fixing runs rampant in this business (like far too many others)... to the point where they blow up their factories when the market becomes too saturated, and of course the exploitation of natural disasters doesn't hurt.

Oh, ok. Well, there's this great online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. It has an article on carbon dioxide with a subsection on Toxicity. It says "At about 8% it causes headache, sweating, dim vision, tremor and loss of consciousness after exposure for between five and ten minutes". It doesn't specifically mention death, but it has a link to another Wikipedia article on hypercapnea which is death from excessive carbon dioxide. If you want to find more such articles, you can use a search engine such as google. You just bring up that site and type what you want in the box and hit enter. Then a bunch of links will come up. Very frequently, the information you're looking for is in the first few links.

Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service: Well, he hasn't been the director of the RDMS for a long time, but I can't find out when he left.

I'm Dutch, I can help you out with that one:
Google translate of an interview he gave(Feb 2010), in which he claims that he was ousted by the principle director (Tennekes was director of "policy development" there) of the RDMS, because he was kicking against climate change. In 1983.
(even better, Tennekes claims the main director worked on kicking him out ever since 1980).

Ad revenues? .. Ha!

A few years ago I had a site that was generating about 4k unique users per month for my Linux/FOSS software program. I thought I'd throw on the Google AdSence. After three months the AdSense control panel said I accumulated $2.53! It wasn't long after that when I got a nasty email from Google saying that due to "unauthentic" click activity, my site account was disabled and I was permanently placed on the AdSense shit list.

I later found out why. Some enterprising user on some forum thought he would support my work by clicking the Google provided ads repeatedly. Following Google's appeal process, I tried explaining this by submitting my story through their online form. This was 2008. To date no response, and I'm still on the shit list.

https://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=ww-ww-et-asfe_&utm_source=aso&answer=57153#q3

I later found out that the best way to make money with online Linux/FOSS software is to use PayPal's donate button allow users to contribute to my "beer fund". While PayPal's fees were atrocious, I was able to buy a case of Guinness. YESss

Instead of regurgitating conventional wisdom

Conventional wisdom? Are you insane?

I worked for many years on the WA Department of Mines Contam monitoring program which has been collecting airborn particulate data, including asbestos for several decades. In addition, I've consulted to many companies on asbestos identifiaction and management for the past 25 years.

Australia has the highest rate of mesothelioma in the world, and we've experienced three phases of asbestos related disease, from the mining of asbestos, asbestos use in industry and most recently from DIY home renovators who demolished their own asbestos structures.

The Australian Mesothelioma Registry tracks incidenses of mesothelioma and publishes an annual report: http://www.mesothelioma-australia.com/home-page.aspx

Knock your self out twit: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=research+asbestos+mesothelioma&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Good bit warmer than now. We can tell because in Greenland receding glaciers are exposing Viking settlements, where beech tree stumps can be found in permafrost.

Can you provide a reference for "receding glaciers ... exposing Viking settlements"? All the historical documentation of Vikings referred only two Greenland settlements -- the Eastern ad Western settlements. You can look at Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:
 
  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlement map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.
 
Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How about on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

They are a long way from receding glaciers, and quite green in summer. So again, at least some reference for these newly discovered Viking settlements that were underneath glaciers would be appreciated, because otherwise I'll just have to assume you are making shit up.

Good bit warmer than now. We can tell because in Greenland receding glaciers are exposing Viking settlements, where beech tree stumps can be found in permafrost.

Can you provide a reference for "receding glaciers ... exposing Viking settlements"? All the historical documentation of Vikings referred only two Greenland settlements -- the Eastern ad Western settlements. You can look at Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:
 
  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlement map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.
 
Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How about on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

They are a long way from receding glaciers, and quite green in summer. So again, at least some reference for these newly discovered Viking settlements that were underneath glaciers would be appreciated, because otherwise I'll just have to assume you are making shit up.

Good bit warmer than now. We can tell because in Greenland receding glaciers are exposing Viking settlements, where beech tree stumps can be found in permafrost.

Can you provide a reference for "receding glaciers ... exposing Viking settlements"? All the historical documentation of Vikings referred only two Greenland settlements -- the Eastern ad Western settlements. You can look at Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:
 
  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlement map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.
 
Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How about on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

They are a long way from receding glaciers, and quite green in summer. So again, at least some reference for these newly discovered Viking settlements that were underneath glaciers would be appreciated, because otherwise I'll just have to assume you are making shit up.

Good bit warmer than now. We can tell because in Greenland receding glaciers are exposing Viking settlements, where beech tree stumps can be found in permafrost.

Can you provide a reference for "receding glaciers ... exposing Viking settlements"? All the historical documentation of Vikings referred only two Greenland settlements -- the Eastern ad Western settlements. You can look at Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:
 
  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlement map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.
 
Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How about on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

They are a long way from receding glaciers, and quite green in summer. So again, at least some reference for these newly discovered Viking settlements that were underneath glaciers would be appreciated, because otherwise I'll just have to assume you are making shit up.

a cap-and-trade regime to reduce CO2 emissions would effectively revert us to a pre-industrial economy.

It would, right? Currently atmospheric CO2 is at ~390ppm, and we need to reduce it to 350ppm to guarantee a stable atmosphere (eg). If we want to stop this immediately, like some scientists like James Hansen are suggesting we need to, then we'll have to reduce our global carbon footprint to negative. This essentially means no more cars, no more coal/oil/natural gas power plants. Even airplanes might be too much. Now, theoretically we could switch to electric cars, but those are still in the future. Saying it will revert us to 'pre-industrial' is too much, but if we want to stop the increase in CO2 in the next 5 years, can you see a way to do it that would not have an enormous economic impact?

I've even seen a few claim that we should be increasing CO2 emissions because it will improve agricultural productivity.

Uh, why do you think it wouldn't? It's not infrequently used in greenhouses.

With respect to backup/restore, iCloud works exactly like Android has been working for over a year now, since 2.3 (maybe earlier, I just didn't see it until then). It's similarly free.

In other respects, I find Apple's implementation to be sorely lacking. One particularly bad facet is Photostream - the fact that there's no way to delete photos in it makes it all but useless, as with digital cameras one tends to snap a lot of photos, most of which are crappy for one reason or another, and it's very easy to snap a pic accidentally as well. FWIW, Android has a similar cloud sync feature for photos, "Instant Upload", integrated with Picasa and recently also G+ (this one has been there for close to 2 years), and it lets you delete photos.

Coastal water levels have risen by a few inches in the last decade.

Really? Where are you getting that number? Because from the numbers I can find, it's been about 40mm in the last decade. Not even a single inch. Also like to see what you mean by temperatures being up 2c in the last decade, I'm not sure how you're interpreting the data there.

The problem with this is The Wall Street Journal is now just another rag spewing the opinions of its owner, Rupert Murdoch.

And Rupert Murdoch's climate change skepticism and his willingness to push this agenda through his news empire through conservative fanboys and other stories is long documented. A simple google search on Rupert Murdoch climate change shows just how ridiculous it is to put your faith in any climate change story from a News Corp, News International or News Limited organisation - even if they're right.

In fact Rupert Murdoch's fanboys have done such an excellent job of muddying the waters and inciting mindless division that its almost impossible now to have a constructive debate on the topic. Which was always the intention IMO. Arguments sell newspapers.

I flew it during the cold war and the first Gulf war. It's mission has changed dramatically and it's become very relevant to today's mission in Afghanistan. I don't see it going away for a long time!

Seems like the same mission, just a different place.

In areas where the country of interest has no anti-air that can reach it, its still probably the cheapest and most versatile.
I would imagine the on-board cameras and other equipment can be upgraded fairly easy as advances in technology allow
smaller and smaller packaging.

Supposedly only 35 left, one wonders how long the spare parts hold out.
Several on the ground at Beale.