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That's not funny. On one of the Eyepiece View pictures there's a tux in the left top corner!
See pic 1 http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/militar y_law/4215725.html

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/warrior-s creen-1L-0507.jpg

Love the tux!

Tux isn't going to be very popular with these guys...

Check out the screenshots. A GUI? A fricking email application with drafts, multiple mailboxes and priorities? A fully editable map?

This is a classic example of badly conceived and designed IT implemented by indifferent lifer government contractors working off of ridiculous 2000-page requirement docs instead of, you know, what troopers actually need. They spend all their time on jamming in 800 features that will never be used, and let the fundamentals (battery life and system responsiveness) go to pot because they don't show up in the demos.

Map with location icons. Gun camera. Simple broadcast texting. That's all you need. Instead some clueless program manager decided it was critically important for a tactical rig to have all the features of his darling Outlook.

The idea behind using ethanol instead of petrol is that currently there's a lot of CO2 stored in petrol, but by growing plants then burning them, we're not adding any CO2 to the atmosphere.

So you mean to tell me that we get 100% of the energy that went into growing that plant back in burning it in the car that uses the methanol? Neat trick that, I suppose peasant laborers harvest the crop by hand, drag it in from the fields on sledges, mash the corn, refine it, and then carry the finished product to the gas station by bicycle?

(We'll ignore that the highest percentage of methanol is the E85 that GM is pushing and that's only 85% ethanol, that other 15% is magic dragon puffs?) Here's a good breakdown on what Ethanol and the other alternatives really cost (yeah, it's a PDF) http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_o f_the_Future-e852.pdf

The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.

One of the most dramatic features in our global mantle shear-wave attenuation model is a very low-Q anomaly at the top of the lower mantle beneath eastern Asia. We believe that this is due to water that has been pumped into the lower mantle via the long history of the subduction of oceanic lithosphere in this region. This could result from the dehydration of hydrous phase D from cold lithosphere that has been subducted into the lower mantle. We are very interested in further pursuing the effects of water on seismic attenuation within the mantle. [Lawrence and Wysession, 2006a,b]

The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.

NASA's COTS contract also includes Rocketplane, which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.

The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.

Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.

We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.

Your post is more true than you realize.

Hmm, I wonder how long until someone manages to flash rogue firmware into one of those new Westinghouse firmware-updateable-via-USB TVs that takes the HDCP-encrypted HDMI signal in and spits the decrypted HDMI signal out a USB 2.0 port.

Honey, I have to reboot the TV because it's just gotten a security bios update and TiVo won't record until it sees the update.

Your post is more true than you realize.

For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings. Go research it. The truth is out there.

All of the terrorists that were on those planes are dead.

A good place to start any 9/11 conspiracy research if you actually want the truth is Debunking 9/11 Myths . The book makes a much better place to start research than the myriad of fringe 9/11 conspiracy sites that seem to get tripped up about basic facts like steel getting soft when it gets hot. (That is how blacksmiths bend and shape steel without actually having to melt and pour it into a mold.) The article that spawned the book is here.

For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings. Go research it. The truth is out there.

All of the terrorists that were on those planes are dead.

A good place to start any 9/11 conspiracy research if you actually want the truth is Debunking 9/11 Myths . The book makes a much better place to start research than the myriad of fringe 9/11 conspiracy sites that seem to get tripped up about basic facts like steel getting soft when it gets hot. (That is how blacksmiths bend and shape steel without actually having to melt and pour it into a mold.) The article that spawned the book is here.

Of all of the possible uses of Nuclear power, using it to power a rocket out of the atmosphere is perhaps the last one I'd want to see actually implemented.

1. Throium Nuclear reactor to make the hot parts safer than your car's gasoline engine.
   
2. Hydrogen as the reaction mass (yes, you still need reaction mass) so no secondary active radionuclides get made.
   
3. ????
   
4. Orbit?
   

I'm sure it'd be trivial compared to the spread of radioactive particles from coal power plants.

Popular Mechanics is known for its deep knowlege North Korean technology.

By the way Popular Mechnaics, where is my flying car or personal submarine?

There are plenty of flying cars and personal submarines available. You just have to pay for your toys. (Or is it work related... for the new paper route?) :D

FWIW, they did a great job on their book: Debunking 9/11 Myths. I highly recommended it if you have seen a movie or web site that claims to show evidence that 9/11 was a US governemnt plot with controlled demolitions, or suggestions that the World Trade Center wouldn't collapse because the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel, and you aren't sure what to make of it. This book will help get you on solid factual and scientific ground.

Thoughts?

• Randi.org
• Popular Mechanics
• blog

For those of us who don't want to RTFA, (in no particular order):

10) Bendable Concrete
9) PRAM (Phase-Change Random Access Memory)
8) Printed Solar Panels
7) Passport Hacking
6) Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
5) Body Area Network
4) Plasma Arc Gasification
3) VoN (Video on the Net)
2) Smart Pills
1) Data Cloud

I guess when #3 comes about, we will be living in the "VoN Age"?

I didn't see anything on the 2006 list that became a buzzword in 2006 - maybe they will in 2007, who knows.

I dunno, Ajax was on that list, and it became pretty big.

--It would certainly go a distance in explaining the actions of some of the supposedly fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in the prelude to the grand 9-11 performance acting in ways most un-Islamic. (Booze and Cocaine and Women [gnn.tv] won't win the devout many points with Allah.) So what's the story here? Were they fundamentalist terrorists, or were they dupe mercenaries who didn't know what they were signing up for, and who were allowed to bring off their clutzy plan while the US secret services conveniently looked the other way [tvnewslies.org], while the secret/shadow government [washingtonpost.com] provided access to the remote controlled [911review.com] jets actually capable of performing the precision flying which badly-trained mercenary goof-balls could not have been asked to manage, and while the Israeli-owned security companies [whatreallyhappened.com] which held contracts at each of the airports involved during 9-11, gave them fast-lane service at the boarding check points?

There is a great antidote to some of that confusion: Debunking 9/11 Myths

Dudes with bombs and box-cutters working independently is still the false reality which needs to be understood here. The myth of terrorists is the preferred tool for building the fascist state. Luckily, this is increasingly well understood. It's the 'How' which seems to be causing some hiccups.

Here are some victories the good guys won against terrorism around the world in the last couple of weeks (this list doesn't include terrorist attacks):

11 suspected Islamic radicals arrested in Spanish African enclave
Spain arrests Chechen rebel suspect wanted in Russia
Turkey Arrests Suspected Regional Al Qaeda Leader
Turkey arrests 10 with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Pakistan arrests 47 suspected Taliban
13 foreign nationals arrested in S. Afghanistan
Police Claim Arresting Taliban Commander in Ghazni
Pakistanis Arrest 90 Afghans at Border
Saudi detains 139 suspected militants
Security forces scrambled to disrupt Asian summit terror plots
Court freezes Islamic group's bank account
Top aide of Qaeda chief in Iraq killed
Morocco jails 14 Islamists
Eight French Islamists Returned To France
4 Dutch Muslims Convicted of Terror Plan
and another trial: Denmark: Muslim terror trial begins
Terrorist plot targeting Illinois mall foiled
Man accused in Taliban arrest ordered held without bail
And reaching back just a little further just to inc

here's a really thorough look at crunching the numbers on a real hydrogen economy

I think it's interesting that the 9/11 Report recommended that United States agencies such as the DoD, CIA & FBI learn to share information more freely to overcome terrorism and now they're turning to internet community applications to accomplish that."

They will be sharing more internally, cutting across organizational boundaries and through previous barriers, and not necessarily with the outside world.

We will often never hear of their successes, even when some of them are readily available. I'm astonished how often you read comments denying that there have been any terrorism arrests or convictions, and acting as if it was all made up*.

* And this doesn't even get into the fringe ideas worthy of debunking.

Popular Mechanics visits Sony headquarters in New York City, where 500-some people have been camped out since Monday. At least they get to test MotorStorm. The magazine also has its Top 5 games for PS3 and Xbox.

Popular Mechanics visits Sony headquarters in New York City, where 500-some people have been camped out since Monday. At least they get to test MotorStorm. The magazine also has its Top 5 games for PS3 and Xbox.

GE claim they can bring the price of hydrogen to $3 per kilogram, and cars that running on hydrogen are reporting mileage from 30~50 miles per kilogram depending on the manufacturers. At this ratio, the hydrogen is almost at the same price of the gas. The problem is infrastructure.

WASHINGTON -- A group of former Clinton administration lawyers are urging the American Bar Association to reject its panel's call for presidents to stop issuing ``signing statements" that reserve the right to bypass laws, saying the problem is with President Bush's use of such statements, not the mechanism itself.

On Thursday, for example, the Boston Globe published an opinion article defending signing statements by law professors Eric Posner of the University of Chicago and Curtis Bradley of Duke University.

Posner worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under former President George H. W. Bush from 1992 to 1993, and Bradley worked for the current Bush administration as a State Department attorney in 2004.

Posner and Bradley agreed with the Clinton-era lawyers that presidents have a right to issue signing statements, calling them ``a useful device through which the president can announce his views . . . rather than conceal them." They also argued that Bush's signing statements are no different than Clinton's -- a claim that the Clinton-era lawyers, who say Bush has abused the mechanism, dispute.

Popular Mechanics wrote a whole article debunking myths such as these.

Seeing as how its impossible for jet fuel to melt steel (jet fuel burns from 800F to 1500F depending on conditions) and that steel melts at 2750F.

From TFA: Jet fuel burns at 800 to 1500F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100F, and at 1800F it is probably at less than 10 percent." Plus jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning. While the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

There are plenty of weird things to point your finger at, but lets look at what the experts in their fields are saying, not what one BYU physics professor and a slew of nutcases are claiming.

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800 to 1500F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800 it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800 to 1500F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800 it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800 to 1500F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800 it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

"I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

liquid nitrogen, webcams, hatchets, dissection kits, power tools are used in this high-concept pumpkin carving contest by the editors of popular mechanics magazine. video, podcast, blog and photos included...

The problem with nutcase conspiracy theorists like you..is that no amount of evidence will EVER convince you otherwise...EVER. You will always try to come up with an excuse to any fact or evidence. Popular Mechanics is one source of information that does a good job of debunking this whole conspiracy nonsense. People like for some reason have a problem with believing that terrible events happen. Debunking sources such as Popular Mechanics aside, the perpetrators, Al Qaeda, has even admitted to it and the rest of the Middle East accepts that it was the work of said organization. I don't really know what else to say to conspiracy nuts...they will never ever believe otherwise.

Wingsuiter Sets Benchmarks in Human Flight http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/ 2724291.html?page=2

How the hell does a /. submission get accepted about a popular mechanics article that has a link to businessweek.com instead of a link to the article at the popular mechanics website? There have got to be better submissions to choose from. /. seems to be going downhill like bad water these days.

Forget the fact that businessweek.com is one of the most poorly designed and annoying web sites on the internet. To be avoided by anyone who might want to actually read something without grinding their teeth flat.

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

I highly recommend the rest of the web article, or the book Debunking 9/11 Myths - Why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts, by Popular Mechanics.

The 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy, one planned and executed by Al Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, international in scope, that has been attacking the United States, and many other countries*, repeatedly since the early 1990s. They took credit for the 9/11 attacks. Video has found in Afghanistan showing Bin Laden had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Atta's "martyrdom video" has just surfaced.

Al Qaeda's goal is to reestablish the Islamic super-state combining government and religion, the Caliphate, over the entire region, and to spread Islam to control the entire world. They understand that it will take hundreds of years, but are willing to do their part. You can see this in Bin Laden's letter to America where his first two demands are to convert to Islam, and implement Sharia... if we don't, they will keep killing us.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.....
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you......

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your pol

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

I highly recommend the rest of the web article, or the book Debunking 9/11 Myths - Why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts, by Popular Mechanics.

The 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy, one planned and executed by Al Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, international in scope, that has been attacking the United States, and many other countries*, repeatedly since the early 1990s. They took credit for the 9/11 attacks. Video has found in Afghanistan showing Bin Laden had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Atta's "martyrdom video" has just surfaced.

Al Qaeda's goal is to reestablish the Islamic super-state combining government and religion, the Caliphate, over the entire region, and to spread Islam to control the entire world. They understand that it will take hundreds of years, but are willing to do their part. You can see this in Bin Laden's letter to America where his first two demands are to convert to Islam, and implement Sharia... if we don't, they will keep killing us.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.....
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you......

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your pol

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

I highly recommend the rest of the web article, or the book Debunking 9/11 Myths - Why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts, by Popular Mechanics.

The 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy, one planned and executed by Al Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, international in scope, that has been attacking the United States, and many other countries*, repeatedly since the early 1990s. They took credit for the 9/11 attacks. Video has found in Afghanistan showing Bin Laden had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Atta's "martyrdom video" has just surfaced.

Al Qaeda's goal is to reestablish the Islamic super-state combining government and religion, the Caliphate, over the entire region, and to spread Islam to control the entire world. They understand that it will take hundreds of years, but are willing to do their part. You can see this in Bin Laden's letter to America where his first two demands are to convert to Islam, and implement Sharia... if we don't, they will keep killing us.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.....
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you......

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your pol

Are you kidding? You can't benefit financially from NASA?

NASA is involved in so many classified projects in our (U.S.A.) aerospace industry, and there is a constant threat from nation-states and foreign governments wanting our most sensitive military technology. For example, technology used in rockets that propel various spacecraft can be used in rockets and missiles. Satellite technology, etc.. NASA has a lot at stake when somebody hacks into them, and their technology is worth $$$ x10^9. Here's a couple links just to get you started:
http://www.gcn.com/print/25_25/41716-1.html/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/militar y_law/3319656.html
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2121111&C=a merica

Anybody remember this little jewel? It didn't last very long. I'm just glad I didn't have to support it when I was at He^H^H Dell.

I suggest some supplemental reading. A little fresh air never hurts.

There are also thousands of pictures and videos from the WTC site that are classified. If planes really brought down the towers, why would such classification be necessary? Also, just like in Oklahoma City, all the evidence from the WTC site was destroyed as quickly as possible. They could've saved the steel for analysis, and we'd know whether or not thermite (or some other explosive) was used to cut the core columns.

You might want to take another view on the 9/11 theories. The arguments you put forward are specious at best, mind you they are not uncommon arguments, but that does not make them correct.

A good primer can be found here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7501020220 921158523

Keep in mind that Penn and Teller use Ad Hominim attacks for 2 reasons. First, its funny, and the show has to be entertaining to some degree. Second, they can be sued for using words like: "Hoax" "Fraud" etc, but they cannot be sued for: "Bullshit" "Asshole" and "Motherfucker". So, keep that in mind.

Also, if you have had the misfortune to watch the movie "Loose Change" first or second edition, you might want to check out this link:

http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/

It is "Loose Change 2nd ed." With added commentary pointing out the errors made in the movie. Keep in mind Popular Mechanics and a host of other publications have already soundly debunked these theories, and for more on loose change, a blow by blow HTML debunking can be found here:

http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/loose_change/i ntroduction.html

Remember, if you ever wonder about an issue, check out both sides and then decide for yourself. If you would like my suggestion into a few good books on how to do that (if you care) they are:

The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
Why People Believe Wierd Things - Michael Schermer
Voodoo Science - Robert L. Park

A collection of excellent debunking links follows:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/12 27842.html
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://www.911myths.com/

I can see the negative points already made and I do share the same sentiments. There is a huge potential for abuse and given the shifty practices of any administration over the years, not just the current ones, this does not bode well for Joe College Student.

On the other hand, much of this info is already available and tracked by credit agencies and listed in your individual credit report. That information is also readily available to whomever wants it and can pay for it. The government is not necessarily doing anything out of the ordinary. It just depends on what info they are collecting and how they are going to use it.

Now, do not forget that back in the previous administration, there were several Chinese national students rounded up for spy-like operations, visas were revoked and they were deported. Those students got here on incentives and grants presented to them by the U.S. so that thier students could come here to study. Great idea! I'm happy to see the world coming here to learn. We have some of the best research facilities on the planet in this country and we should be sharing our knowledge. However, when those we trust to share the knowledge wish to use it against us, that is detrimental. Check out photos of China's Navy and Air Force and compare it to not only the U.S. aresenal but also Russian, British and French aresenals and you will see why. Here is just a small sampling of what China has been doing. China's Secret War Those current operations have direct links to the information those students who were deported were stealing and sending home. When those students returned to China after thier deportation, they were treated as heros.

They are just one example. Even our "friends" are trying to gleam information about sensitive programs so they can copy the designs and have the same capabilities without the controls or paying for the rights to the technology that has been developed by scientists in other countris like the U.S., Russia and European nations.

Tracking this info will allow the government to help identify potential threats and watch them for signs of espionage. However, given past performances of our government, it will go past the line of reason and turn normal, law abiding college students into criminals.

I only watched the intro for the first one because it's a long vid, but I did learn that the history of failed UN resolutions goes back much further than I was aware.

The Galloway video... Well, I don't agree with Mr. Galloway on much of anything, but he does make monkeys out of talking heads who try to act like they "know stuff" when they don't have that "stuff" scripted out for them to read. Whenever I watch an unscripted interview with him, I think of the old joke about a tragedy ocurring when the TV news anchors held a conference and took questions from the public -- someone in the audience asked them a math question and all their heads exploded. Unfortunately, in this case, the tragedy is that because the interviewer is just a talking head, Mr. Galloway is allowed to get away with painting Israeli as a big bully in the region, when one only has to look at a map to see how absurd that idea really is. Galloway never mentions that Israel has been constantly attacked from Lebanese territory, or that the "illegal prisoners" held by the Israelis are those brave freedom fighters who sneak into Israel and kill sleeping families (and not by mistake).

The Iranian Prime Minister doesn't believe that the holocaust took place, and that all the scholars who say it did occur are lying because they will be imprisoned if they say it didn't. I guess I'll have to tell my old engineering professor (now emeritus) that the Nazis didn't really put that tattoo on his arm, and that camp they called Auschwitz was really a vacation resort. If my professor's parents were alive, I'm sure they'd like to know this, too -- but the "activity director" at Auschwitz put them into the left line, and not the right. So yes, Ahmadinejad sounds crazy, and dangerous. I wonder if he knows how the modern name "Iran" came into use. I'll go further and say that a nuclear armed Iran is a bad idea.

Those 911 links are something. I'm really going to take the word of an archaeometrist over the architects and engineers at this site. If the World Trade Center towers were brought down by precisely placed demolition charges, do you think the placements were selected by an archaeometrist, or an architect? And who set them off... Elvis?

Good grief, man. If you hurry, you might still be able to catch the "mother ship" flying behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

When I first saw your post, it was being moderated "insightful", not "funny". There clearly were people who weren't getting the joke, including moderators. History has repeatedly shown that on Slashdot there is a significant percentage of people who will believe just about any foolish idea about the United States or the current administration if it portrays them in a bad light, even when it is plainly contrary to evidence, common sense, and other people taking responsibility for it. You only have to look that the appalling nonsense over the 9/11 conspiracy, blaming it on the US government, to get a taste of it. Clinton Derangement Syndrome was bad enough, Bush Derangement Syndrome is ever worse.

As to my point, it was that the "science hostile" Bush administration (that has a plan for space flight to Mars) is in fact monitoring and testing for the dangerous strains of bird flu, and that they aren't being so stupid as to deny mutation/evolution of it.

Kudos on a +5 funny though.

Actually, air will act as a nonlinear element and produce a difference frequency. http://www.raven1.net/aegis.htm/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/1 279591.html?page=2&c=y/

Seems they've got reason to worry after all. The "we all do it" argument is bullshit. China's government is notorious for economic espionage and many of its corporations, probably most, are owned by military officers or the military as an organization. The fears about China are grounded in reality.

Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. "I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building," he tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked like."

Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. "I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line." But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: "The paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement." Romero responds: "Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years."

It took me some creative digging, but I found what you were talkingabout. I remember seeing the article in Popular Mechanics a couple years back when it first came out. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/compute rs/1279251.html

Corel's problem was that it lost pretty much all focus somewhere around the mid 1990's. Their strength was with CorelDraw, but by the mid 1990's they were trying to sell a mini Linux computer called the NetWinder (I remember playing with one of the developer units -- they were actually pretty slick little machines, which IMO weren't matched until Apple released the Mac mini), bought out WordPerfect, tried their hand at a pure Java Office Suite, and tried their hand at their own Linux distro. In effect, they had no sense of cohesion -- they seemed to be trying their hand at any crazy project that came around.

Linux wasn't the problem. Linux just happened to be one of the many things they played with during this time. At the same time, they let their original core business stagnate, allowing other competitors in the graphic software business to catch up and surpass them while they wasted resources on all of these other projects.

Part of the "problem" to my mind was Corel's original intent: to be Michael Cowpland own personal research labs ("Corel" == "Cowpland Research Lab"). From a technology standpoint I have to applaud them for the things they tried to do -- the Java Office suite wasn't as bad as many people made it out to be (the beta generally ran well on my OS/2 box at the time), and could have been a vehicle which could have (and I suspect did) push improvements in Java's areas of deficiency at the time. The NetWinder was a really slick and ultra-portable Linux computer that ran on an ARM processor (we had one of the development units at an ISP I worked at in the mid 90's that we were thinking of selling as co-located servers; sound familiar?). Their Linux distro was decent and capable. But in the end they spread themselves too far, and couldn't really find (or build) markets for these products. Their core business got chewed up by the likes of Adobe, Microsoft already had a lock on the Office and OS segments, and in the end only hobbiests were interested in an ARM-based Linux computer that had limited natively compiled software available for it (you often had to build the software you wanted to run that wasn't included with the system yourself, at least in the early days -- great for hobbiests and techies, but not exactly a recipe for mass-market appeal. However, I am still of the opinion that the NetWinders failure was really that the concept was ahead of its time). And a Java-based Office suite didn't interest much of anyone from a commercial perspective (although many of the parties involved in the push towards thin clients were very interested in the outcome of code of this sort, and I personally think that it's only a matter of time, although in the end AJAX may be a better solution than Java (ref: Google Spreadsheets)).

Linux just happened to be one of Corel's targets. I don't think Linux itself had anything to do with Corel's problems -- it just happened to be one of the things that distracted them from their core business, and never did in any way that earned them any real market distinctions. Corel's problem was a lack of focus and spreading themselves way too thin while virtually ignoring what made their mark on the industry in the first place, allowing their competition to surpass them.

Yaz.

we really need to start working on a next generation system right now

We are, and quoth that article: "The winning concept will be chosen in 2008, and the manned vehicle flown in 2014."

But, in the meantime, the Shuttle is all we got, and we should use it, rather than waiting until 2014 to go back up into space.

What if Lewis and Clark waited for the railroad to be built before heading West because canoes and horses were too risky?

Lasers, and crank up the power to the "blow up tanks at 3000m" http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/12 81536.html setting.