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Lets not get a head of our selves here, they've only re-programmed a cell, not created artificial life. If you are looking for a fully artificial cell you should focus on what's going on in George Church's lab.

http://www.masshightech.com/blog/2009/09/25/antigen-express-synthetic-h1n1-flu-vaccine-in-the-works/

Of course not! Why would anyone turn down a subsidy offered? That doesn't change the fact, however, that A Nuclear Power plant and produce energy cheaper than coal

Citation needed. On the other hand, I'll provide some:

"Nick d'Arbeloff, president of the New England Clean Energy Council, views nuclear plants as costly. "Nuclear power plants are massively expensive and they are massively subsidized."
"By far the cheapest, cleanest, and quickest strategy to meet America's growing demand for electricity is energy efficiency and demand-side management."
"For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says".
"Coal is America's most abundant and cheapest fossil fuel but, as Scott Pelley reports, burning it happens to be the biggest contributor to global warming."

Wiki has a table of the cost of various energy sources at Levelised energy cost. Of more than 10 sources listed of cost per megawatt coal is cheapest while 4 others are potentially cheaper than nuclear. One of those potentially cheaper is wind.

with a virtually nonexistent environmental footprint

Try to tell that to indigenous people's from who's land uranium is mined. Ask the Sioux or Navajo in the US. Ask the Algonquin First Nation in Canada. Or the aboriginals in Australia such as the Adnyamathanha community.

Now I picked on Australia, Canada, and the Unites States because they should have among the strictest environmental laws. Imagine what happens in countries without strong environmental laws.

AND with equal reliability (which, of all of the renewables I've ever heard of, none can accomplish all three).

Check into conservation which is listed as being cheaper and geothermal which is also listed as being cheaper by at least one of the links above and is good for baseload power.

Subsidies will be taken by the Nuclear Industry as long as they are offered

Nuclear power asks and is addicted to subsides. Without them Wall Street will not pay for nuclear power plants to be built. At least solar and wind would be built without subsidies. Think NanoSolar asked for or was given subsidies? Not that I know of, instead billionaire founders of Google invested in NanoSolar. Even if they did though, economically subsidies are supposed to be only temporary aid, however coal and nuclear power get subsidized year after year after year. There is nothing temporary about the subsidies they get.

One, the new "Cap and Trade" laws will make Coal Power (which is already more expensive to operate than Nuclear, even though the initial plant construction costs *might* be cheaper)

As referenced above coal is cheapest and even with cap and trade or carbon capture and storage it's still cheaper than nuclear power. Now if you have a link to data that disputes that provide it.

Despite all the rosy pictures and cheery outlook for renewables, *only* Nuclear Energy is a drop in replacement for Coal Fired Energy.

No matter how many tymes you repeat a lie* it doesn't magically make i

As far as availability and the comercialization concerns brought up there are a few articles referring to cyberanalytix and dev. of netspa in a platform http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/05/05/story11-CyberAnalytix-takes-a-7-year-path-to-$100K.html http://www.outlookseries.com/news/Science/3420.htm

I've never understood why no one just started an all-hybrid cab company.

People are starting hybrid taxi companies:

http://www.masshightech.com/displayarticledetail.a sp?art_id=66215&cat_id=165

>A lot more people will benefit from gaining broadband than will be hurt by losing HAM frequencies.

Yep, with broadband prices and slow adoption this is a great avenue that will re-start competition, especially when local monopoly telecoms decide not to roll out DSL because they didn't get the proper back-room deal. Here in Illinois, many of the wealthier suburbs (and other locales) are only now getting DSL because SBC wanted both local and long distance rights. Well, SBC got it recently (or is on the fast track to do so) and in the meantime the cable people took this as a sign to raise their prices to a ridiculous amount.

The HAM savior argument is pretty flawed. Not only will increased broadband be a social change as it lets more people onto the information revolution, the very same infrastructure can be used to diagnose and detect disasters. Even in worst case scenarios HAM equipment (which should leave the hands of the hobbyist and goto the hands of trained professionals at the firestation) will actually work if the powerlines are down.

Its really shameless to be advocating HAMs just because it *might* have an emergency role as a defense because people don't want their pretty radio toys taken away from them. Funny how there's a consensus regarding RIAA et al changing their behavior and catching up with the times, but when it comes to HAM radio, its best to stay the course. The 'horseless carriage' hypocrisy strikes again.

The Canadians are doing BPL mixed with wireless RIGHT NOW. I guess in the end, if your emergency services truly end with volunteers with radios its high time to re-assess your emergency systems.

I went to the link in the /. story. Isn't that a picture of the guy who busted Mitnick?

Adobe may be leaving Asian makets but their products won't be... Adobe is just leaving the risk behind. For example, a recent press release said that they chose Lionbridge, which will localize the company's recently released Illustrator 10 graphics software into Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Korean, "based on its ability to provide the Adobe team with improved quality and a more manageable localization process" (see press release) but I think it's simply an operation in risk management: Lionbridge invests the US$750,000 it would cost to produce the Asian versions of Illustrator 10 and then it also pays royalties. If the piracy rate is as high as the Business Software Association thinks it is -- 94 percent -- then Lionbridge takes all the risk while Adobe can only benefit. This meshes with Adobe's official position: "the company remains committed to developing Chinese-language versions of its products, despite comments reportedly made by its chief executive officer last week that Adobe could abandon the market because of software piracy in the region." (see IT World)
-Duke


Additional coverage: Mass High Tech, IT News (Australia)