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@iserlohn: "Carter was a good president, probably the one of the best, that just happened to be not as good at politics".

It doesn't help if the future president Regan does a deal with Iran to sell them arms and to withhold releasing the hostages until after Regan is sworn in as President. The moneys so gained being passed onto the Nicaraguan Contras. Such moneys being used to fund the importation of cocaine into the US under the protection of the CIA. "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S."

"... until the revolutionary Islamist government took power and declared the US to be its enemy." That's because Iraq attacked Iran then. Where Iraq used biological bombs; Iran refused to stoop to that level. Iraq, with US intelligence+weapons. As such, US was their enemy too. Note that it was a coup, not "counter-coup." Even the CIA admits to that: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... Stephen Kinzer wrote a Bestseller there: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

Trashing some mod points to post this, but here's a side-by-side comparison.

Important differences: Classic shows me the text of 7 comments. Beta shows me the text of 2.

Classic uses about 85% of the horizontal width of the screen for comments. Beta uses about 50% or less.

Those are probably the most relevant differences for me. We all come here for the comments, since the stories are by definition published elsewhere first. If a redesign makes it harder to read comments, that's a problem.

You leave out a number of critical factors (such as atmospheric absorption including weather, and angle of incidence) reducing that peak 1300 w/m^2 figure. Rather than try to identify them all, as well as errors in the factors you do consider ...

All the data collection and math for solar energy received at ground level, averaged night and day for a year, has already been done. The best locations in the continental US (by far) are around El Paso TX, southern NM, large parts of AZ, and some of southern CA. The cream of the cream receives 6.4-6.8 kWh/m^2/day (2300-2500 kWh/m^2/year). This represents an average power of 260-290 W/m^2. For 77 km^2 that would total 20-22 GW total. The figures assume solar cells statically tilted at the best fixed angle.

Factor in a solar cell efficiency of 20% (about par for the course), and you get 4-4.4 GW. There are further minor reductions due to less than 100% transparency of the protective covering over the solar cells, dirt on same, power busing and conversion of voltage and DC to AC, a small percentage of the billions of solar cells being defective at any given time, less than 100% coverage of the surface with solar cells, etc.

But overall, assuming they can find a place in India essentially matching the best locations in the continental US, the quoted figure of "over 4 GW" for average appears to be a valid achievable performance. The peak output would be very roughly 4 times that.

I think people sometimes underestimate how awful coal power is.

Sherco was the quintessential baseload coal fired power plant cranking out 2400MW through three units.

Assuming the 2400MW was running continuously, that amounts to 21TWh per year. According to this article (free copy here), the air pollution produced by 21TWh of coal power generation in a developed country is estimated to cause about 500 deaths and almost 5000 serious illnesses. Using the estimate from another article (free copy here), the externalities due to air pollution from 21TWh of coal power generation are about $2 billion, excluding costs associated with climate change.

The NSA will not be stopped by the courts.

I tend to believe the Supreme Court has the authority to declare its operation unconstitutional and order changes or abolishment. Of course they have no enforcement arm of their own, so I share your dubious view on the chances of getting any satisfaction thereby.

Contact your congressmen and senators, and tell them to abolish this criminal organization.

I'm not panning the idea, but it's a murky area. I'm not sure they CAN abolish it. After all, the NSA was established by Harry Truman in 1951 using nothing more than a "memorandom" which in turn revised his previous "Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9". This shit was classified Top Secret at the time.

One assumes that what the President directs he can abolish, but the quality of the current officeholder is so poor that any appeal for him to do so has little chance.

If Snowden is a stock, I want to short him.

You wrote a great line, but there is little reality to it. Snowden isn't stock, he is a man that made some fateful decisions. After stealing massive amounts of highly classified documents he fled the country. He is now trapped in Russia, and that will be difficult to change. The President has said no to amnesty for Snowden, that he is facing prosecution for espionage. His passport has been canceled, and the only way the US State Department will provide him papers to travel is for a one way trip home. In the last day or so, Snowden wrote an open letter to the people of Brazil, offering to help investigate US spying in Brazil in exchange for asylum. If it wasn't clear before, that is essentially a public announcement that he is willing to sell out his country.

Rather than winning, Snowden is bringing about what he said he wants to avoid, which is a world filled by surveillance. More and more countries are beefing up their intelligence agencies and internet surveillance capabilities as a result of his revelations. Russia is one of those countries - they have passed new regulations that will enhance their ability for internal and internet spying to begin implementing some of the capabilities that he revealed. (That is especially ironic since now Snowden is trapped in Russia for at least the time being and the Russians are using the blueprints that he provided to enhance their spying. He is hoisted on his own petard. )

Diplomatic relations among many nations are now strained due to his revelations. Indonesia recalled its ambassador from Australia. The US and Germany are at loggerheads over intelligence cooperation. The US and the EU are have difficulties. As a result of these diplomatic problems there is growing mistrust among many nations in Europe, and how do they react? By reducing or cutting cooperation with allies and beefing up their own intelligence agencies and surveillance capabilities. They do this to both compensate for the loss of cooperation among agencies and as a defensive measure due to the mistrust caused by Snowden's leaks. Chancellor Merkel has brought a former head of intelligence into her government as a direct response to the German - American problems. France is significantly increasing its intelligence powers. We have already mentioned Russia. Finland is planning to increase their intelligence capabilities. The list goes on and on.

Of course this all plays to Russia's advantage. More than a few former Soviet block intelligence officers believe that Snowden is a Russian asset. He was certainly in touch with both Russia and its intelligence services long before it was publicly acknowledged. The Russian government said that it was surprised by Snowden showing up there, when in fact he stayed at the Russian consulate while he was in Hong Kong, and even had his birthday party there.

As to the US, there has been one preliminary lower court victory for 2 (two) people, and that has been delayed to allow for an appeal. The legal commentary (by actual lawyers) that I have seen on that "victory" makes it look like a poor bet as an end state for the long run.

Preliminary Thoughts on Judge Leon’s Opinion by Orin Kerr
The Procedural Problems With Judge Leon’s NSA Ruling by Orin Kerr

Orin S. Kerr - Biographical Sketch

Professor Kerr is a nationally recognized scholar of criminal procedure and computer crime law. His many articles have appeared in top journals including the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review. Professor Kerr’s articles have been cited in over 100 judicial opinions, including decisions by the United States Supreme Court and all of the regional U.S. Courts of Appeals. In a recent stud

We stood idly by while Saddam expended huge quantities of chemical weapons.

Personally that may be true. On a bigger scale, we (the United States) provided helped them deploy the chemical weapons.

Our governments (US and UK) knew very well what Saddam had, and what Saddam was capable of.

We certainly should have known what Saddam had and was capable of. First, we helped put the Ba'ath party in to power. During the Iran / Iraq war, we helped them financially and with intelligence information. Then, we sold the precursors of chemical weapons to them and provided reconnaissance intelligence that was used in their deployment. Why else would Donald Rumsfeld be smiling as he shook Saddams hand in 1983?

You will note, I hope, that I've said nothing in Saddam Hussein's defense. I have ONLY pointed out how dishonest our own governments are.

And here is more evidence supporting that supposition.

We stood idly by while Saddam expended huge quantities of chemical weapons.

Personally that may be true. On a bigger scale, we (the United States) provided helped them deploy the chemical weapons.

Our governments (US and UK) knew very well what Saddam had, and what Saddam was capable of.

We certainly should have known what Saddam had and was capable of. First, we helped put the Ba'ath party in to power. During the Iran / Iraq war, we helped them financially and with intelligence information. Then, we sold the precursors of chemical weapons to them and provided reconnaissance intelligence that was used in their deployment. Why else would Donald Rumsfeld be smiling as he shook Saddams hand in 1983?

You will note, I hope, that I've said nothing in Saddam Hussein's defense. I have ONLY pointed out how dishonest our own governments are.

And here is more evidence supporting that supposition.

Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate them. Your mention of experiments was spot on with the use cases I'm trying to learn about. I've worked with many scientists who use commercial software packages for biomedical research where their experimental results may be archived for 10+ years before being reanalyzed. I recently helped a colleague pull a Windows 2000 server out of storage to rerun an experiment. We got it going after some difficulty and that got me thinking about virtualizing the harddrive, which then lead me to wonder about the portability of virtualized machines between hardware hosts (including cloud providers) and the resulting reproducibility issues that could occur. I then read through several interesting papers showing variability of floating point math in commercial hypervisors, which lead to my posting on Slashdot. Thanks again. Some interesting links: http://faculty.cs.gwu.edu/~timwood/papers/im2013_tech.pdf http://www.vmware.com/pdf/hypervisor_performance.pdf http://www.cc.iitd.ernet.in/misc/cloud/XenExpress.pdf

They're actually trying to raise a Russian sub.

it makes me happy to see this:

If you have a design, you will know what call things.
If you have names for everything, you will be able to build a design from there.

words are our tools...well alpha/numberic symbols arranged in groups to form instructions for a machine to execute

typing a word is the same as 'naming' the thing you are creating when you type...ha! this certainly gets us into a Mobius Strip of language after awhile

as I've learned programming, I've found that 2nd Order Cybernetics concepts to be incredibly helpful

you start with the 'Social Construction of Reality' which has become a convention almost like the Big Bang more than a theory from any one scientist...it is broadly accepted across the Social Sciences

essentially, they idea is: humans communicate meaning and construct our individual brain's concept of the 'universe' based on language

to see what I mean, now dig in to some Cybernetics theory to see how theorists define 'cybernetics'...Norbert Weiner is my favorite

notice the parallels the author draws between controlled and autonomous systems in machines and in nature on the definitions table on page 1

I believe we can push computing languages further by applying these concepts to coding, precisely because they are founded upon and grounded in the truth that you hit upon when you say this:

9. Designing a solution
1. Naming things

are pretty much two sides of the same coin

if we *start* there and continue with a 'cybernetic' approach programming becomes more inviting to noobs, new languages are easier to learn for experience programmers, skills transfer across any system or domain in programming better, and coding starts to resemble network topology

I'm not doing the best job explaining things, cybernetics is a tough concept to just bat around in conversation...but if this interests you have a look at the paper I linked above...the first thing they do is discuss what cybernetics is and why it is useful

its kind of my mission to push computing towards a more cyberntic model and away from a Turing model

Not the Nazi's, or the Stasi or the KGB. But the Iranian[1] Syrian[2] and Israeli[3] ones
[1] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the_baath_water
[3] ...

And if you want to deny the USA today story read this. They were planning the Iraq invasion as early as January 2001.

As the NSA said in the 1970's ~NSA (“Wood Study”) "SIGINT sites were generally acceptable as long as they were invisible to the local population" page 393
from http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/docs/doc%201%202008-021%20Burr%20Release%20Document%201%20-%20Part%20A2.pdf
Welcome to the gift of free ENIGMA encoding with another rotor?

The Iraq war intelligence is obviously fake to everyone, seeing as the man that manufactured it admitted to faking them. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm

There is no evidence that the actions of Bush I or Clinton were based on false evidence.

Why are you so fixated on Bush II?

Did you see what Putin just did to Obama? Now the Russian plan that's the subject of the Slashdot article this thread is under won't even come up for discussion at the UN until Obama renounces all possible use of force against Syria.

Obama got totally and bloodily HORSE FUCKED by Putin over Syria.

So much for Obama's "red line", eh? Utter lack of credibility. Yeah, that's good.

The Iraq war intelligence is obviously fake to everyone, seeing as the man that manufactured it admitted to faking them. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/index.htm There is no evidence that the actions of Bush I or Clinton were based on false evidence.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20121207/
In the 1980's a CIA staff historian wrote a secret history of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Thanks to FOIA, some of the work was released in the 1990's.
One final volume was locked up as the CIA "does not want to discourage disagreement among its historians."
Welcome to a world where the CIA knows that any basic history can "confuse the public".
Thanks to the sequester-induced budget cuts more US history can be kept safe with ever better long term document hygiene.

It started when North Korea invaded South Korea at the behest of Stalin.

Citation?

North Vietnam had made the decision to attempt to conquer the South well before Kennedy's action.

And is that before or after we decided to prop up what was left of French colonialism in the 50s? It's a bit like saying, "The Union had made the decision to conquer the Confederacy well before Bull Run." If the UK had invaded and supported the confederacy which would have otherwise fallen, which government would you consider to be more legitimate?

The article does not claim what you say it does. The US was not involved in the coups that occurred in Brazil and Chile, for instance.

Washington D.C., 31 March 2004 - "I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do," President Johnson instructed his aides regarding preparations for a coup in Brazil on March 31, 1964. On the 40th anniversary of the military putsch, the National Security Archive today posted recently declassified documents on U.S. policy deliberations and operations leading up to the overthrow of the Goulart government on April 1, 1964. The documents reveal new details on U.S. readiness to back the coup forces.

The Archive's posting includes a declassified audio tape of Lyndon Johnson being briefed by phone at his Texas ranch, as the Brazilian military mobilized against Goulart. "I'd put everybody that had any imagination or ingenuityâ¦[CIA Director John] McConeâ¦[Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara" on making sure the coup went forward, Johnson is heard to instruct undersecretary of State George Ball. "We just can't take this one," the tape records LBJ's opinion. "I'd get right on top of it and stick my neck out a little."

Among the documents are Top Secret cables sent by U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon who forcefully pressed Washington for direct involvement in supporting coup plotters led by Army Chief of Staff General Humberto Castello Branco. "If our influence is to be brought to bear to help avert a major disaster here-which might make Brazil the China of the 1960s-this is where both I and all my senior advisors believe our support should be placed," Gordon wrote to high State Department, White House and CIA officials on March 27, 1964.

To assure the success of the coup, Gordon recommended "that measures be taken soonest to prepare for a clandestine delivery of arms of non-US origin, to be made available to Castello Branco supporters in Sao Paulo." In a subsequent cable, declassified just last month, Gordon suggested that these weapons be "pre-positioned prior any outbreak of violence," to be used by paramilitary units and "friendly military against hostile military if necessary." To conceal the U.S. role, Gordon recommended the arms be delivered via "unmarked submarine to be off-loaded at night in isolated shore spots in state of Sao Paulo south of Santos."

The CIA, as recounted in the Church Committee report, was involved in various plots designed to remove Allende and then let the Chileans vote in a new election where he would not be a candidate: It tried to buy off the Chilean Congress to prevent his appointment, worked to sway public opinion against him to prevent his election, and financed protests designed to bring the country to a stand-still and make him resign. The CIA, acting with the approval of the 40 Committee -- the body charged with overseeing covert actions abroad -- devised what in effect was a constitutional coup. The most expeditious way to prevent Allende from assuming office was somehow to convince the Chilean congress to confirm Jorge Alessandri as the winner of the election. Once elected by the congress, Alessandria party to the plot through intermediaries -- was prepared to resign his presidency within a matter of days

Contrary to popular belief, President George H.W. Bush was not all that terrible of a President or political operator. He just wasn't all that popular. And he was actually a decent spookmaster.

Wait, what? Have we fallen so far that we have to paint over Bush Sr.'s legacy like we already have Reagan's? How pathetic.

Even if you discount the unproven and unproveable stuff (dirty deeds for Hoover, lying about his presence in front of the book depository, bagman for the October Surprise, member of the pedophile "big brother" club, bigotry against atheists, et cetera ad nauseum) it's still pretty clear that Bush Sr. was a warmongering corporate toady who only looks good by comparison with his retarded son.

Much like Clinton, who looks great when compared with anybody else post-Eisenhower, but that's only because the field's so weak.

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

The Soviet suppression of the workers strike in East Germany in 1953, the Soviet invasion to put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the "Prague Spring - Socialism with a Human Face," and the Soviet invasion of communist Afghanistan.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 27, 1979, under cover of an ongoing Soviet military buildup, heavily-armed elements of a Soviet airborne brigade were airlifted into Kabul, Afghanistan, to violently overthrow the regime of President Hafizollah Amin. Within hours after the beginning of this Trojan Horse-type operation, Soviet troops had overwhelmed the elite presidential guard, captured Amin, executed him along with several members of his family for crimes against the people and seized control of the capital.

Within days Soviet armor columns were fanning out across Afghani stan to occupy major population centers, airbases and strategic lines of com munication.

Uprising in East Germany, 1953 ; In Eastern Germany, 1953 Uprising Is Remembered
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Added bonus: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

The Chinese-Soviet border war of 1969 very neary went nuclear:

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969: U.S. Reactions and Diplomatic Maneuvers

A State Department memorandum of conversation, published here for the first time, recounts one of the more extraordinary moments in Cold War history--a KGB officer's query about the U.S. reaction to a hypothetical Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

The Soviet suppression of the workers strike in East Germany in 1953, the Soviet invasion to put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the "Prague Spring - Socialism with a Human Face," and the Soviet invasion of communist Afghanistan.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 27, 1979, under cover of an ongoing Soviet military buildup, heavily-armed elements of a Soviet airborne brigade were airlifted into Kabul, Afghanistan, to violently overthrow the regime of President Hafizollah Amin. Within hours after the beginning of this Trojan Horse-type operation, Soviet troops had overwhelmed the elite presidential guard, captured Amin, executed him along with several members of his family for crimes against the people and seized control of the capital.

Within days Soviet armor columns were fanning out across Afghani stan to occupy major population centers, airbases and strategic lines of com munication.

Uprising in East Germany, 1953 ; In Eastern Germany, 1953 Uprising Is Remembered
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Added bonus: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

The Chinese-Soviet border war of 1969 very neary went nuclear:

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969: U.S. Reactions and Diplomatic Maneuvers

A State Department memorandum of conversation, published here for the first time, recounts one of the more extraordinary moments in Cold War history--a KGB officer's query about the U.S. reaction to a hypothetical Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

The Soviet suppression of the workers strike in East Germany in 1953, the Soviet invasion to put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the "Prague Spring - Socialism with a Human Face," and the Soviet invasion of communist Afghanistan.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 27, 1979, under cover of an ongoing Soviet military buildup, heavily-armed elements of a Soviet airborne brigade were airlifted into Kabul, Afghanistan, to violently overthrow the regime of President Hafizollah Amin. Within hours after the beginning of this Trojan Horse-type operation, Soviet troops had overwhelmed the elite presidential guard, captured Amin, executed him along with several members of his family for crimes against the people and seized control of the capital.

Within days Soviet armor columns were fanning out across Afghani stan to occupy major population centers, airbases and strategic lines of com munication.

Uprising in East Germany, 1953 ; In Eastern Germany, 1953 Uprising Is Remembered
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Added bonus: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

The Chinese-Soviet border war of 1969 very neary went nuclear:

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969: U.S. Reactions and Diplomatic Maneuvers

A State Department memorandum of conversation, published here for the first time, recounts one of the more extraordinary moments in Cold War history--a KGB officer's query about the U.S. reaction to a hypothetical Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table

I wonder if you can do this:
Millions of people leaving extreme poverty in a short time in an historically poor country, all while you have the people who control prices and products in the opposition (which also means artificial shortages), the CIA and the US govt. actively organizing and paying to disinform and to destroy internal economy and political stability (as they did against Allende in Chile, and against many other, which is well known and documented), under an international economic crisis, with food prices increasing since (if I recall correctly) 2008, with consumption rising because of people leaving poverty (and, from there, prices), etc.
None in the poor-hating, racist and xenophobe Venezuelan upper class, none of the previous presidents did anything like that before Chavez, they are mostly foreigners who don't care about their own workers (same as in all Latin America).

Cuba didn't receive oil for "free", they gave LOTS of medics and teachers in exchange to Venezuela, and it's the same for every other country: Chavez exchanged help.

How stupid can people be to believe everything media says, knowing that the mass-media and international "news" agencies are controlled by big holding corporations, kept in their place by corporate marketing and PR? Same for Venezuela. The "freedom lovers" there were a little group of the same kind of people and corporations, that was instrumental in the coup attempt. You can't have real freedom if you don't have basic education, or even food.

Yeah, it's easy to do anything from your computer and/or mouth. Not all has been good, obviously, but Venezuela has changed for good, there is no doubt about that, and even the opposition recognizes it (and even imitates, saying Capriles is a leftist, the same thing Obama has done).

I guess this is the kind of advances and the country you like, don't you?

Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt

Yeah, I don't know how this happens. I mean, I know how it happens ... you go to a school on the East Coast so you have the name on your resume. I went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities for four years and came out with $20,000 in loans (worked three jobs in college). A coworker's cousin just graduated from George Washington in DC and came out with $250,000 in loans. Tuition rates at the University of Minnesota versus tuition rates at GWU (note that those are per credit hour! and they don't give you every credit over 13 free like they do at the U of MN).

Frankly, I think this article should be titled, "skip the overly expensive college because you'll get a more than adequate education somewhere else." Okay so I have to prove myself in an interview over someone from GWU. Challenge accepted.

And if everyone drops out of college to start their own thing, who are you going to be hiring when your startup needs to transition to a medium to large company? Other dropouts whose ideas were crap. Are you sure you want to advocate this to be a more widespread phenomenon?

Because you know perfectly well that Obama was talking about transparency in government

... while running the most secretive and closed administration ever. Breaking promises about public hearings on health care is just the tip of the iceberg. You then have to look at they way he promised not to take money from lobbyists, which then just turned into have registered lobbyists shut out, while access gets granted to unregistered lobbyists and "bundlers". And the quote doctoring required of all media outlets, as reported by the New York Times, administration officials holding meetings with lobbyists at coffee shops to avoid official logs of the meetings, exerting "executive privilege" over the criminal "Fast and Furious" operation, and on and on.

In fact, the Obama administration was given the GWU "Rosemary Award" for the Worst Open Government Performance in 2011.

I could go on for days about this kind of hypocrisy.

Because you know perfectly well that Obama was talking about transparency in government

You must be looking at a different conversion than I was replying to - I don't know where this comes from. The discussion started with Romney's tax returns, which is personal information unrelated to government transparency, at least while he's not holding public office.

Do you know what "useful arts" means?

It is the processes of making things, such as manufacturing processes.

http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/KindsElg-II.pdf

For those who argue that they have nothing to hide, I suggest they read Daniel J. Solove's "I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" for a succinct explanation of the issues.

For those with more detail-oriented interests, I suggest picking up a couple of his books on the issue of Privacy. A partial list can be found at his website.

TFA is sparse on tech details. So how exactly nano-particles know if a cell is cancerous or not?

Some (very sparse) details on the GWU site

In her project, Angela aimed to design a targeted gold and iron oxide-based nanoparticle with the potential to eradicate cancer stem cells through a controlled delivery of the drug salinomycin to the site of the tumor.

Let's take your points as they are:

Hans Blix:
- Iraq was impeding his mission deliberately.
- Iraq was playing cat and mouse games.
- Report to UN on Janurary 27th, 2003: "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it."

ElBaradei:
- was relying on Iraq themselves to provide evidence.
- report to the UN from ElBaradei was that Iraq was withholding evidence and materials, that their Dec. 7, 2002 document dump “did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998."

At the time, they were NOT certain what was present, because Saddam was deliberately not cooperating. So we had three theories. We had the theory (which turned out to be correct) that there wasn't anything left and Saddam was just blustering. We had the theory, which the US had, that Saddam's weapons program had gone underground into storage or hidden operation. And we had the theory, proposed by the Weenie French, that we shouldn't attack Iraq because Saddam would use WMD's to retaliate.

Oh, and let's not forget that the UN high mucky-mucks, particularly those like Hans Blix and ElBaradei, were already under heavy suspicion related to Kofi Annan and the oil-for-food scandal and all the bribery Saddam's regime was tossing around from it.

shredderchallenge seems to be Slashdotted, so apologies if this is a dup.

During the Iran Hostage Crisis teams of carpet weavers were recruited to piece together shredded documents. They were then published in 1982 in 54 volumes under the title "Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den".

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, they raided the U.S. embassy and CIA office. U.S. personnel shredded all the documents they could (using strip shredders), but the Iranians used rug weavers to reconstruct many of the documents, and sold them as a book. This is the reason strip shredders are rarely used nowadays.

Aside from the obvious espionage uses, this would probably also be very useful for archeology. Some of the most common archeological finds are shattered pottery with pictures or writing on them, which are near-impossible to reconstruct.

Or, you could stop committing and covering up crimes and routinely classify any and all information regardless if it's needed or not.

What he said x 1000. Why on earth do we need to redact 80% of what gets 'declassified' in 50 year old documents and re-classify the rest? Whomevers dirty laundry this is is long since gone, but clearly your tax dollars are hard at work...

"Washington, D.C., February 21, 2006 - The CIA and other federal agencies have secretly reclassified over 55,000 pages of records taken from the open shelves at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to a report published today on the World Wide Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Matthew Aid, author of the report and a visiting fellow at the Archive, discovered this secret program through his wide-ranging research in intelligence, military, and diplomatic records at NARA and found that the CIA and military agencies have reviewed millions of pages at an unknown cost to taxpayers in order to sequester documents from collections that had been open for years."....

In that case wouldn't quasicrystals be useful for a number of friction reducing applications?... On a smaller scale, if paper had a very subtle quasicrystal "grain" embossed or watermarked on it, you would have jam free printer paper!

Or toilet tissue:

http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/penrose.htm

Oh, and the main problem I found with Vietnamese notes was the exchange rate, like trying to pay for a 20,000 taxi fare with a 200,000 - quite different!

The Fortran Coloring Book, with the program listings in Creative Computing and 101 Basic Games tied for a close second...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "A FORTRAN Coloring Book." Yes, it's a real book: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~kaufman1/FortranColoringBook/ColoringBkCover.html

I would call it influential due to the imitators it had in the end-user publishing field. There were many friendly computer books with cutsy images, but A FORTRAN Coloring Book was the first.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB63/doc10.pdf

One of the first major decisions regarding equipment came prior to the establishment of TFR and involved the use of airpower. Upon initiating his secret manhunt for Aidid, Admiral Howe, through General Montgomery, requested and received four AC-130H Spectre Gunships. Upon arrival, the AC-130H's were used to surgically strike and destroy key SNA targets, and also flew support for the QRF while they conducted raids to disarm the SNA militia. However, within less than a month of their arrival, operational control of the AC-130H's was relinquished by Montgomery in order to incite Aidid to give himself up. At the time, this was probably a good idea, however, when Aidid only increased the ferociousness and number of his attacks, Howe and Montgomery never recalled the aircraft. Had the AC-130H's been in Mogadishu at the time of the 3 October raid, they could have flown an offensive air mission to support the tactical withdrawal of TFR. As such, the only air support TFR received during the raid was from the MH-60's and AH-6J's, and they were not enough.

Another important decision relating to equipment that might have saved many lives during the raid was that of armor. Following the September shoot down of an MH-53 by RPG's, General Montgomery requested help in the form of armor. Montgomery's superiors, CINC CENTCOM, General Hoar, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell, relayed the request but did not support it strongly enough to keep Secretary of Defense Les Aspin from stopping it. The reason Aspin gave was that sending armor could result in a military escalation which would hamper any chance of a political settlement with Aidid. Little did Aspin know that this decision would turn out to be a costly error. But what about the military leadership in Somalia? Why did they simply take no for an answer? The military leadership should have shown enough nerve to hammer the point home with General Powell, and if this still did not produce results, then they should have terminated the hunt for Aidid until they were able to receive the armor they so desperately needed. If TFR would have had tanks, even with the ambush, they would have gone in, knocked over the mud huts, put a steel cable around the tail of Super 61, and pulled the thing out. Instead, political and military leadership decisions needlessly put their troops in harms way without the proper equipment to successfully complete the mission.

September and October would have been pretty good for the Japanese. They would have gone from fear that the US had a whole bunch of nukes to realization that they didn't have any.

Looks like it's more in the middle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Plans_for_more_atomic_attacks_on_Japan

The U.S. expected to have another atomic bomb ready for use in the third week of August, with three more in September and a further three in October.

The reference given says they expected them to be produced one every ten days.

Apparently you missed this and this and this and this and this and and and and

Wasn't without cause in what sense, exactly?

Media campaign for Iraq war started in advance of any intelligence findings at all
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/index.htm

No imminent threat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Pre-war_Intelligence_on_Iraq

"The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that many of the allegations in the speech were not supported by the underlying intelligence."

MI6 warns Blair that no WMDs exist - Bush admin ignores it
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4466512.ece

There's like 50 of these, get a grip. We were railroaded into the war under the false premise that these were the people who attacked us. It was probably for ideological reasons, but plenty of big players dipped their beaks as deep as they could go. As for "proximate" causes (which, one can easily argue, would not have even happened without our involvement), the civilian casualty count in Iraq was greater than tens of thousands, with lowest estimates starting upwards of 100,000.

I can't believe I'm still arguing these points. How much evidence is required? Yes, I hated Bush II, but we aren't talking about some red-blue pissing match. This blood was spilt from and by our children, and it was based on fabrication and hand-waving. Won't someone... PLEASE actually think of the children - like, for real this time?

I agree, but I was thinking about what some politicians have said and worry about. Myself, I've stated many tymes government scares me more than any business or terrorists.

Terrorists have only killed a few thousand people in the last century, and the most advanced weapons they've got are motherfucking airliners.

Whereas in the same tyme period the NAZIs exterminated 600,000 plus people, Stalin massacred some 20,000,000, and Mao another 50,000,000.

The US, on the other hand, has murdered millions, and has access to the most advanced weapons in the world. In fact, the only country to ever murder other people using nuclear weapons is the USA. I'd rather put those guns in the hands of terrorists than in those of the US, I'd feel safer.

Not only has the US government used nuclear weapons against others, but the US has killed and massacred others or supported those who carried these killings and massacres. To take just one example then President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger supported Indonesia's dictator Gen. Suharto's invasion of East Timor, where 200,000 East Timorese were massacred. How many Chileans disappeared at the same tyme while Ford and Kissinger supported Gen. Pinochet's overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile? How many Mayans were massacred by right wing thugs in Central America with Reagan's support? And that doesn't count terrorists governments have supported.

Yes, governments, all of them, scare me more than any terrorists.

Falcon

Daniel Solove makes a good case that imbalance between the power of the individual vs society (government and/or corporations) invariably precedes upheaval.

Iran is already fighting Israel.

Gee, that's gratitude for ya... I don't believe things are as they seem.

GOD is REAL but JESUS is an INTEGER.

I think this is from the FORTRAN coloring book.

There's nothing wrong with the Adam Smith theory of free markets.. But that theory is so far divorced from reality as to be counter-productive to society.

What's counter productive is saying free markets brought us all the ills you list. You say the government should make the world's life/death decisions. Guess who has killed more people than any other thing... Government, that's what. Counting just Jews the NAZIs exterminated 600,000 people. While they were doing that Stalin massacred 20 million people, and south of the Soviet Union Mao killed an estimated 50 million.

Now how many people have businesses killed? There may be something that killed more people, I don't know, but Union Carbide's Bhupal disaster only killed an estimated 15,000.

I dare you to find a company that has killed more people than the governments listed above. Heck, to make is easier you can even include the USA, try to find a business that killed more than the US. However when doing so don't leave out the estimated 4000 Cherokee who died on the Trail of Tears, the 400 who died at Wounded Knee and all the other massacres of American Indians. But you don't need to consider the 200,000 East Timorese who were massacred after Indonesia invaded East Timor with President Ford's and Kissinger's support. Or all the other foreign adventures the US had.

Oh, one more thing. Who do you think is the world's biggest polluter? The US Military. Add in all the other agencies of the federal government and the US government beats everyone when it comes to pollution.

I'm proud to live in a country that takes due process very seriously

Really? I don't know about Britain but you can't mean the US. I already mentioned a US admin support for the Indonesian invasion of a sovereign nation, East Timor, in which 200,000 were massacred. CIA supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, as well as his repressive rule. How about Reagan's support of The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations. Operation Northwoods was a proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terror against US citizens in the US and blame Cuba for them. COINTELPRO was a group of actions taken by the FBI against political groups to discredit and disrupt them. The CIA's Family Jewels: "Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents". Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban airliner brought down by terrorists, Cubans who the CIA paid as agents. The Libertarian, Individual Liberties, and Free Markets Institute CATO has the report Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record it answers in the affirmative.

And let's not forget what the US has done to American Indians. Even though the Cherokee had treaty rights in the Carolinas and Georgia, President Andrew Jackson ordered the military he commanded to force the Cherokee to march on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma after gold was found. The US broke one treaty after another signed with the Sioux, forcing them unto smaller and smaller reservations. There was the Forced sterilization of Native American Indian women through the 1970's.

If I dig some more I can find a lot more I bet. So don't go saying the US "runs a pretty tight ship".

Falcon

I'm proud to live in a country that takes due process very seriously

Really? I don't know about Britain but you can't mean the US. I already mentioned a US admin support for the Indonesian invasion of a sovereign nation, East Timor, in which 200,000 were massacred. CIA supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, as well as his repressive rule. How about Reagan's support of The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations. Operation Northwoods was a proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terror against US citizens in the US and blame Cuba for them. COINTELPRO was a group of actions taken by the FBI against political groups to discredit and disrupt them. The CIA's Family Jewels: "Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents". Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban airliner brought down by terrorists, Cubans who the CIA paid as agents. The Libertarian, Individual Liberties, and Free Markets Institute CATO has the report Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record it answers in the affirmative.

And let's not forget what the US has done to American Indians. Even though the Cherokee had treaty rights in the Carolinas and Georgia, President Andrew Jackson ordered the military he commanded to force the Cherokee to march on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma after gold was found. The US broke one treaty after another signed with the Sioux, forcing them unto smaller and smaller reservations. There was the Forced sterilization of Native American Indian women through the 1970's.

If I dig some more I can find a lot more I bet. So don't go saying the US "runs a pretty tight ship".

Falcon

I'm proud to live in a country that takes due process very seriously

Really? I don't know about Britain but you can't mean the US. I already mentioned a US admin support for the Indonesian invasion of a sovereign nation, East Timor, in which 200,000 were massacred. CIA supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, as well as his repressive rule. How about Reagan's support of The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations. Operation Northwoods was a proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terror against US citizens in the US and blame Cuba for them. COINTELPRO was a group of actions taken by the FBI against political groups to discredit and disrupt them. The CIA's Family Jewels: "Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents". Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban airliner brought down by terrorists, Cubans who the CIA paid as agents. The Libertarian, Individual Liberties, and Free Markets Institute CATO has the report Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record it answers in the affirmative.

And let's not forget what the US has done to American Indians. Even though the Cherokee had treaty rights in the Carolinas and Georgia, President Andrew Jackson ordered the military he commanded to force the Cherokee to march on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma after gold was found. The US broke one treaty after another signed with the Sioux, forcing them unto smaller and smaller reservations. There was the Forced sterilization of Native American Indian women through the 1970's.

If I dig some more I can find a lot more I bet. So don't go saying the US "runs a pretty tight ship".

Falcon

Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I'd be more comfortable with the federal government reading my mail than Google.

You are ridiculous. One, you can choose to use or not use Gmail. Two governments have killed more people than any business. That I know of the business that has caused the most deaths was Union Carbide, the Bhopal Disaster. An estimated 15,000 people were killed during and after the spill. 15,000, now how many people have governments killed? In the 1994 Rwandan genocide an estimated 800,000 were murdered. After Indonesia invaded East Timor, with the support of President Ford and Henry Kissinger, an estimated 200,000 or 1/3 of the East Timor population was massacred. Many, many more were killed by the NAZIs, the Soviet Union, and Mao in China. Besides the above mentioned East Timor massacre, the US has a lot more blood on it's hands.

Quite simply government has much more power and is more dangerous than any business.

Falcon

Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that the Saudis (some of them) are sponsoring terrorists. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/shocker-admits-saudi-donors-chief-financiers-al-qaeda-leaked-cable/ The US government has given rise to just about every original terrorist out there: Taliban-Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Saddam... http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics More recently, the FBI created a "terrorist" (Christmas Tree) almost from whole cloth. http://wonkette.com/431185/u-s-government-now-creating-terrorists-so-it-can-arrest-them Since we're kinda making terrorists ourselves, but ignorant policy and a more ignorant populace will keep the terror dream alive. I welcome the Wikileaks dumps. Our government has done more "harm" where terrorists are concerned than any other country on the planet. It's our own fault we keep doing this to ourselves, then ignoring it. Every administration since Regan has lead us to where we are.