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If you do not think the Church has suppressed education, then you need to go have a long look at texts describing the Inquisition. One single example is how the Church dictated the wholesale burning of every scrap of paper documenting the Mayan civilization because it was declared heresy. (Ref: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/maya).

That was a policy decision by one dude, not "the Church". In his defense, he was trying to stamp out an ongoing religious practice of ritual human sacrifice. Yes, the local population was cutting the hearts out of people -- mostly children and teenagers -- to appease the gods. Book-burning or not, I'm rather more sympathetic to the Christian religion than the Mayan.

Anyway, it's not clear that the Mayan civilization had any technical learning to teach the Spanish. These were almost certainly just instruction manuals for the right way to tear peoples' insides out. The Mayan civilization had been in decline for hundreds of years at this point. And Spain already had acquired a quite decent number system (including zero) from India, via the Arabs, along with a lot of other neat stuff.

Another very famous example is the Church excommunication of Galileo for daring to suggest the earth orbits the sun.

Galileo was never excommunicated for that reason nor for any other. His punishment (house arrest) was a bit closer to the Comfy Chair than that. But yes, condemning his writings was a bad move.

And of course there's the modern-day refusal to accept natural selection as a concept they'll tolerate being taught in schools.

This is absolutely not an action of "the Church" but of a fairly small number of American conservative evangelicals. The people who tell you that the teaching of evolution is demonic are the same sort of people who will tell you that Rome is "Babylon the Great", the Pope is the anti-Christ, his satanic organization is the Great Harlot, etc.

Many, many other examples are out there for the learning if you care to look.

If there are, why do people always drag out the same example of Galileo?

They were largely disorganized. The Church is far and away the longest lasting, best-funded, globally-organized suppressor of education that has ever existed. No other example even comes close.

I'm guessing you don't get MTV.

It sounds like you are accusing the Church of suppressing education and civilization.

He may not be, but I am. If you do not think the Church has suppressed education, then you need to go have a long look at texts describing the Inquisition. One single example is how the Church dictated the wholesale burning of every scrap of paper documenting the Mayan civilization because it was declared heresy. (Ref: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/maya). Another very famous example is the Church excommunication of Galileo for daring to suggest the earth orbits the sun. And of course there's the modern-day refusal to accept natural selection as a concept they'll tolerate being taught in schools. Many, many other examples are out there for the learning if you care to look.

Are you saying the collaspe of education and civilization had nothing to do with that whole burning and pillaging thing from the pagan barbarian hordes such as the Goths and Vandals?

They were largely disorganized. The Church is far and away the longest lasting, best-funded, globally-organized suppressor of education that has ever existed. No other example even comes close.

I actually did think the parent comment was funny. Nonetheless, in case anyone seriously does think that Gore won the 2000 election, Wikipedia has this (and much more) to say about the subject:

"In the aftermath of the election, the first independent recount was conducted by The Miami Herald and USA Today. Counting only "undervotes" (when the vote is not detected by machine), and not considering "overvotes" (when a ballot ends up with more than one indication of a vote, for example both a punch-out and hand-written name, even if both indicating the same candidate)[36] Bush would have won in all legally requested recount scenarios."

A group of media organizations, including The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN, also seem to find that Gore would still have lost the election had the recount not been stopped by the Supreme Court.

I do realize that this is probably not a popular notion on Slashdot (or with most liberals), but it is the truth. Now sometimes reality and our perceptions collide, and we are left with the choice to either accept the truth or to hang on to our misguided perceptions.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000

Honestly, mr. Savain, if your ideas were in fact anything but complete bullshit (and you weren't such a complete asshole when it comes to presenting those ideas) someone might actually take you seriously. You remind me of Gene Ray and his Time Cube, and I don't think I'm the only one.

As I wrote elsewhere, opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one. You forgot to explain why your opinion matters to me. The last time I checked, you don't put food on my table. Neither do D-Wave, David Deutsch, Stephen Hawking and all the other crackpots in the physics community who believe in time travel and quantum computing. LOL. And yet, nothing moves in spacetime.

There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.

From "Relativity from A to B" by Dr. Robert Geroch, U. of Chicago

[Spacetime is] Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning).

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations

I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.

David Deutsch (source: NOVA OnLine)

Now who is the crackpot, me (who, like Popper and Geroch, does not accept time travel and insists that nothing can move in spacetime) or David Deutsch? The answer depends on whether you are an ass kisser or you are on the side of truth and honesty.

New algorithm...same results? Given their vast historical success in their endeavors[,] I'd bet on it.

A recent Nova ScienceNow program did a featurette on the SETI project (specifically the Allen telescope array). The analogy they used for current efforts to locate extraterrestrial intelligence is trying to determine if there are fish in the ocean. Space is BIG (yadda yada long way to the chemist yada yada), and current efforts are very narrow, so it's like trying to use a water glass. Dip the glass into the ocean, look at the contents, say "nope, no fish in there", repeat. Just because on the first ten thousand times you don't find a fish in the glass, doesn't mean there aren't fish in the ocean. Now they're dipping the glass in another location - they may find fish there, they may not. (e.g. if they try to fish in a tropical tidal pool they'll have more success than in the open Arctic ocean.)

The payoff for finding aliens is SO big that even though the tasks seams sisyphean the people performing it think it's worth the effort. True, using a bigger net or fishing in more populated waters would likely speed the task, but at this point we know nothing of fish, so we don't know where they live or even what sort of net would hold them.

Although I doubt that they will find anything, I wouldn't be so scathingly dismissive. After all, if you don't look you know you won't find anything.

In Germany they introduced a Government funded program to guarantee a fixed reasonable rate (of buying power from individuals) for the next 20 years.

Solar power installations have exploded there - with a 20 year price guarantee, large companies can invest in solar in bulk. They apparently go door to door and offer homeowners free electricity (for the use of the rooftop) as long as they can sell the excess into the grid.

Check out chapter 4 here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/program.html

I bet the real reason is the people at the top don't want anybody to know, is so that they make more money.

1) When they make genuine mistakes in _adding_[1] charges , nobody knows whether they are wrong or not and that means more $$$ to them
2) If someone intentionally adds taxes that are obsolete[2], same thing.
3) It makes it harder to compare prices fairly

All you need to do is make sure there's a computer check so all the taxes and charges are never _negative_ (and if they are you just remove the minus sign), then you can hire as many incompetents as you want to add the charges up. If one day a tax is a rebate, if it still gets added and if people somehow find out the "error", you go "Oops, our poor overworked staff can't cope with the complex back end rules", and refund the money (minus the interest etc).

Maybe there's an wiretap charge somewhere, so you pay to be illegally wiretapped, or is that retroactively legal already? ;)

[1] How many surcharges and taxes vs discounts and rebates you get, if you get more types of discounts then ok I'm wrong about 1) making them more money.

[2] It has been alleged in http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html that many phone companies continued to charge $1 a month to run Bellcore even after Bellcore was sold.

The truth is Einstein was not a healthy man.

First off his wife helped him come up with the e=mc^2 theory, yet she received no credit for it.

In the original publishing of the theory in 1905 she was credited with co-author credits

Einstein himself spoke to her as an equal in respect to science. He all but admits to collaborating with her on his 1905 papers which made him famous.

In a 1901 letter he refers to the theory of relativity as our work

Another small piece of Einstein history that few people know is the terms of his divorce from his first wife (The woman mentioned above) was that she received all prize money when he wins a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity. He agreed to this and in fact Einstein never saw any of the money when he won the Nobel prize.

Einstein awarded Nobel PrizeAfter seven nominations, Albert wins the 1921 medal for physics. He gives the prize money to Mileva, per their 1919 divorce agreement. It is the smallest cash award since the Nobel Prize was created, worth about $348,000 (in 2003 USD).

Sorry, I canâ(TM)t link to it but it is in the PBS timeline.

The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!

cousin fucker

So there you have it folks, the man so many think of as a symbol of modern science not only stole ideas (or at the very least refused to acknowledge getting help) from his wife but also decided that it would be fun to screw his cousin.

The truth is Einstein was not a healthy man.

First off his wife helped him come up with the e=mc^2 theory, yet she received no credit for it.

In the original publishing of the theory in 1905 she was credited with co-author credits

Einstein himself spoke to her as an equal in respect to science. He all but admits to collaborating with her on his 1905 papers which made him famous.

In a 1901 letter he refers to the theory of relativity as our work

Another small piece of Einstein history that few people know is the terms of his divorce from his first wife (The woman mentioned above) was that she received all prize money when he wins a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity. He agreed to this and in fact Einstein never saw any of the money when he won the Nobel prize.

Einstein awarded Nobel PrizeAfter seven nominations, Albert wins the 1921 medal for physics. He gives the prize money to Mileva, per their 1919 divorce agreement. It is the smallest cash award since the Nobel Prize was created, worth about $348,000 (in 2003 USD).

Sorry, I canâ(TM)t link to it but it is in the PBS timeline.

The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!

cousin fucker

So there you have it folks, the man so many think of as a symbol of modern science not only stole ideas (or at the very least refused to acknowledge getting help) from his wife but also decided that it would be fun to screw his cousin.

I suggest watching it. It explains everything, much better than I can do. Online here.

He tried to prevent the war, but there's only so much he could do.

He chose loyalty to the President and the Republican party over loyalty to the his country. That doesn't make him qualified to be president, but it does make him a typical Republican.

He tried to prevent the war, but there's only so much he could do.

Drug lords kill many many more. But do they get a special status? Are there special surveillance laws because of them? No!

Maybe not special surveillance laws, but our 4th amendment rights DID get eroded. Take a look at this, this, this, this, and this. For drugs, it was the seizure part that got trampled. For "terrists" it's the search part. There's always some bogeyman we're willing to sacrifice our rights to.

"In order to communicate well enough for history to record it do you need a documented language?"

Good question. David Attenborough belives that humans communicated stories through song and dance long before they learnt to speak and paint. The aboriginal cave paintings he talks about in the link have not changed their design in 30,000yrs. The natives he talked to were still painting the same designs on bark. The paintings themselves are cues for story telling, when Attenbourough asked what the paintings were about he wasn't told much. He found that you have to put the painting, dancing and singing alltogether, to understand the story from the painting alone is like reading slashdot just for the articles.

There was a Nova episode about global dimming too.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

Thankfully, I can rely on /. for most of my news and rely on TV broadcasts for the rest of it.

Then you sir, must have one incredibly twisted world view.

I would, at the very least, suggest replacing TV Broadcast news with NPR and PBS

You need to watch the PBS Frontline 2-part episode "Bush's War".
In that documentary is is obvious Powell was played by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. I imagine Powell has learned a hard lesson and would be a great VP to help clean out the neo-conservative cancer that has sent this country down a terrible path.

I think the Dover, PA case is probably (hopefully) a pretty good preview of what they're in for.

I knew I remember reading this idea before. Not that I see that this is what they're doing, but if the hardware is out there, the software is easy enough to change...
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020523_000733.html

[...]Mesh networks offer Quality of Service [...] and support Voice-over-IP. An enlightened car company -- or better still EVERY car company -- should put a Mesh node in every car they make whether the owner wants it or not. In a couple of years, when 20 million Mesh'd cars are on the road and the car companies [...]could light that network and, in one stroke, take a big chunk of the U.S. telephone, Internet, and mobile phone markets. Just buy space on cellphone towers and tie it all together with cheap fiber [...]

There are plenty of things he said that he didn't record.

I think the most powerful persuasive factor in Nixon's resignation was the perception that the people wanted to see him go down.

That's what makes Nixon's tapes unique. They were voice-activated. The other Presidents that we know who had tapes, they pushed the button, they recorded when they saw fit, and when they wanted to. They turned it off when they wanted. But Nixon's were voice activated. No doubt, he was aware of the taping system sometimes. Sometimes I think he and Haldeman had what I would consider to be contrived conversations clearly for the record. But other times, as you know, when you're being taped, sometimes you become oblivious to it, and you just go on. And he did.
~Stanley Kutler, transcriber of the tapes, on Nixon's taping setup

There are plenty of things he said that he didn't record.

I think the most powerful persuasive factor in Nixon's resignation was the perception that the people wanted to see him go down.

That's what makes Nixon's tapes unique. They were voice-activated. The other Presidents that we know who had tapes, they pushed the button, they recorded when they saw fit, and when they wanted to. They turned it off when they wanted. But Nixon's were voice activated. No doubt, he was aware of the taping system sometimes. Sometimes I think he and Haldeman had what I would consider to be contrived conversations clearly for the record. But other times, as you know, when you're being taped, sometimes you become oblivious to it, and you just go on. And he did.
~Stanley Kutler, transcriber of the tapes, on Nixon's taping setup

Fat wrinkled naked old hippies! Oh God my EYES!!! Seriously, the mental image alone is harm enough.

For the record: the hippy was dead and buried in 1968, 38 ain't old, for an American I'm pretty slim, and my ass ain't wrinkled yet.

But take the "fat wrinkled naked old" person you're picturing, and add a Speedo or a G-string and pasties. Is that really more aesthetically pleasing?

PBS recently did a documentary comparing the US system with a bunch of others around the world. I highly recommend it. You can watch it online here.

- RG>

Where the problem is: I think the people in the US should have a problem with the present (and proposed) underwhelming ISP subscription plans, since they've already paid USD 200 billion.

I heard that the US ISPs were given USD 200 billion (via tax credits, higher charges) in the understanding that they would roll out stuff like 45Mbps (up and down) speeds to subscribers (there was talk of fibre optics and so on).

If that USD 200 billion was actually used to improve internet connectivity, perhaps there wouldn't be such a great need to throttle P2P today in the USA. With current tech, USD 200 billion should go a lot further.

http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

That is part of the original or classical oath. I think that you will find that most modern versions leave that line out. See NOVA or medterms.com. The science of medicine has changed quite a bit in the couple of thousand years since Hippocrates' time. The oath has been updated in accordance with modern science.

Tech:
I, Cringley http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/rss2.xml
Freedom to Tinker http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?feed=rss2
Freenode staffblog http://blog.freenode.net/?feed=rss2
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/rss.xml
Xaprb (MySQL) http://www.xaprb.com/blog/feed/atom/

Games:
Cruise Elroy ("Intelligent discussion of video games") http://cruiseelroy.net/feed/
Jonathan Drain's D20 Source http://d20.jonnydigital.com/feed
Socratic Design http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Stephen's Weblog (NDS homebrew) http://blog.akkit.org/feed/
StupidRanger http://feeds.feedburner.com/Stupidrangercom
Zero Punctuation http://www.escapistmagazine.com/rss/articles/editorials/zeropunctuation
Zelda Reorchestrated http://www.zreomusic.com/feed/
Used to read The Escapist, quite enjoying the magazine format, but seven or so articles all on the same day each week became too much (once a month please!). The format has changed since then, it just isn't the same.

And the Comics:
xkcd comic & blag
Penny Arcade
and no feed, but 8-bit Theater

And a number of various personal feeds

Slashdot I just check every few hours, I can be assured there is going to be a new article to read

Thank you for your response. It's very informative, highly pedantic, and extremely condescending.

I understand that reactors have a controlled critical mass. Duh. That's what produces the heat. I never said otherwise.

As to the "nuclear" explosion, Chernobyl, et all - I have spoken to two different nuclear engineers who disagree with you. They are my sources.

Here is another one (Frontline):

The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!

BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.

My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.

BILL MOYERS: BOB SIMON DIDN'T WAIT FOR THE PHONE TO RING.

BILL MOYERS: You said a moment ago when we started talking to people who knew about aluminum tubes. What people-who were you talking to?

BOB SIMON: We were talking to people - to scientists - to scientists and to researchers, and to people who had been investigating Iraq from the start.

BILL MOYERS: Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 MINUTES?

BOB SIMON: No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called.

BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?

BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.

BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?

BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras.

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"

There's more to a job than the salary.

Of course, we all know how well that worked out for John Sculley.

The real problem behind high gas prices isn't a lack of crude, but the lack of refineries. Global production of crude excedes demand by about 2 million barrels per day, but refineries are unable to keep up with demand for gasoline and other by-products.

Several years ago PBS had a feature on NOW which mentioned a large California refinery that was shut down. Given the high output of the refinery, some concluded that it was done to deliberately constrain capacity. I found the transcript. (audio or video may be available too)

Hmm, I can't say I know anything about Pinochet and Friedman (other than what I just read). But my bias is in favor of Friedman, from what I've read and seen of him on other topics -- I'd like to know your source for that; there's always a possibility of crazy things.

This is what he had to say on the subject...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_miltonfriedman.html#10
See 'On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet'

Fiat is far from perfect, government thinks they can pull value out of their asses, but they're just contributing to a system of inefficiencies. (Gold bugs call it a house of cards, pyramid scheme.. I don't think it's nearly that bad)

You may be interested in the drake equation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/drake.html

Last I checked, the US Army wasn't a private organization nor was it explicitly religious. Also, the armed forces are not always known for their fairness and decency: see Tailhook.

We've had a "color" president since the sixties:
before: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/images/jan-june04/ads_dwight.jpg
after: http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/speechgfx/nixon-8-8-74.jpg

At the Rocky Mountain Institute they are researching new manufacturing processes to use carbon composites instead of steel for car frames. The results is something as strong, if not stronger, and much much lighter. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/open/clip-scen-lola-01.html I recommend watching the Nova episode "Car of the Future" for more information on the RMI "hypercar"

The worse part is the multi-billion dollar corporations have been paid billions by the government to roll out universal broadband to everyone and have never delivered. That's worth whining about.

So the major telcos were given over 200 billion to give broadband to the nation and not delivering, in exchange for special FCC privileges to deny competition from really getting a foothold. There's been numerous articles about the money spent for services never delivered, that was just the first to show up in google.

The '96 telco act was passed to help get competition. CLECs were able to be formed, basically a second fiddle telco setup. Then Bush selected Powel's kid as chairman of the FCC and they went - not surprisingly - for big business monopolistic decisions. They dropped the telco act, they allowed companies to be pure monopolies once again. In fact Ameritech/SBC was petitioning that they wouldn't roll out any more broadband until the act was rolled back as they didn't want competition. They promised that if it was rolled back they'd get everyone on the latest broadband. And the suckers in Washington believed it!

If our telco companies existed in a free market, I'd be perfectly fine with having to move to get real service. Being in federally and state mandated monopolies is just a pain in the ass for innovation and should be complained about often.

Given Apple's relationship with Adobe, they might have to buy Adobe to manage that.

Cringely makes a plausible case for that. From a certain point of view, continuing use of FrameMaker could be validation. (i.e. why they're not working on getting off of it by now)

Easy, but not a good example. Halliburton, or more to the point, Kellogg, Brown & Root, is the only company in the US that can handle what needs to be done in Iraq. Ever wonder why no other company has sued the government over the Iraqi contracts? Because no one else can do the job. Sorry, try again.

ONOZ! not yet another futile evolution vs. creationism take no prisoners flame war.

Take a look at this NOVA documentary on the recent Dover, Pennsylvania court battle over teaching evolution in school. It is an incredibly view into the tactic of the creationist movement.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

NARRATOR: Scattered fragments of twisted metal are all that remains of Thresher, the greatest submarine of her day. This footage was shot in the 1980s by Bob Ballard, as part of a classified Navy effort to survey the debris. His cover story was his search for the Titanic.

Gartner is mainly known for two things:

• "Duh"
• Being wrong.

Make public transport free and it'll cost less to run - setting up and running ticketing systems costs so much $$$ and don't cover the costs anyway - dispense with them and you can run the whole system for less.

http://pbs.org/cringely

Ah - No.

Most industrialized countries run a system more efficient that what we have here, and there are a number of different ways to do so.

There is a quite useful Frontline that went over the benefits and trade-offs of several countries - Japan, UK, Taiwan, Switzerland, and Germany.

All of them had lower total healthcare costs, all of them took different approaches, and different trade-offs (and Frontline went into the deficiences of each system as well).

But yes, it turns out that systems that save you money, turn out to be easy to pay for - a strange financial that I've noticed often seems counter-intuitive to libertarians and conservatives, although I concede to having never entirely understood why.

I would suggest doing some research. You look like a putz when you make statements that something is inconceivable and stupid when people can point to obvious examples.

Pug

It seems to me (reading the responses at +2) that sshuber and other posters are experiencing the effects of an economic downturn, while others are not. Having recently returned from a road trip to Washington State (from British Columbia) I only saw a few overt indications economic problems, which is not to say that they don't exist.

However we have all seen troubling reports of layoffs in the tech industries. The tech sector does seem to be suffering less in the current situation than say, the real estate or banking industries.

Coming back to the original topic, I am most interested in these questions: Does a slowdown in the tech industry benefit or hurt FOSS projects? Does it free up more talent to work on these projects, or do these people end up purely focused on getting the next job? Do FOSS projects rely too much on corporations that can be kicked out from under them by the economy?

Personally, when I've been unemployed, it has been a blow to my self esteem, and I associate that with being perhaps selfish in that I did not even consider working on FOSS. Not saying that was the best move on my part. Anybody else?

I whined about him stealing Florida thanks to badly designed ballots

Given that a democrat designed the ballot and that a democratic election board approved the ballot I think it would be far more accurate to say that the democrats gave away Florida.

This is somewhat of a tangent but you should realize that the "stole the election" theme is a political strategy of the democrats, not a historical fact. To be fair, the republicans would have done the exact same thing had the situation been reversed. However according to PBS, a somewhat left leaning organization:
"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html

He is possibly correct. At high altitude, the temperature drops and the speed of sound drops off. However at very high altitudes, there is an increase in atmospheric temperature that reverses the results from the formulae. At 25 miles the temperature can be up to 18 degrees Celsius that places sound speed at 336m/s. All depends how fast the drop-off is versus his speed/acceleration and atmospheric density.

Mach Calculations. Temperature v Altitude.

Back in 2002 Cringley found a solution to this very problem