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Correct http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/index.html

In fact, there have been a few news articles about the application of their capacitors.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/200503 10-9999-1b10maxwell.html

And as recently as yesterday
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060608/n ews_1b8maxwell.html

Correct http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/index.html

In fact, there have been a few news articles about the application of their capacitors.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/200503 10-9999-1b10maxwell.html

And as recently as yesterday
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060608/n ews_1b8maxwell.html

Here's just the first difference I saw after I finished replying to your post:

How many "family values" Republicans are getting busted for family violations? And how many Democrats, who don't hang neon "family values" signs around their necks to con naive family voters?

"brilliant woman"... but a questionable doctor

They do this all the time, it's called toilet-to-tap :D

This AP story is all over the press, not just MSNBC

For example:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193749,00.html
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/ 04/21/financial/f080720D78.DTL
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/lo cal/states/california/northern_california/14397469 .htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/tech/20060424-0 012-ca-applesecurity.html
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/APPLE_SECUR ITY?SITE=KFWB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME= 2006-04-30-15-15-12

Well when you can't see the law, you have no idea what it's doing.

So the time may be...now.

It would be extremely easy to almost completely halt the flow of illegals-it is called frozen bank accounts of the top officials and business inside of mexico. We do that with other nations we have a serious beef with! If we can make it illegal to do business with Iran or cuba, it could be the same with mexico until they clean up their act, and putting pressure at a few points at the very top would be a lot easier than trying to corral millions at the bottom! No leaks so they can transfer funds, just one day freeze their accounts, call in the ambassador, politely inform him that the accounts become unfrozen as soon as THEIR police and military secure THEIR side of the border. Combine that with only 10% of the effort with the troops and gear we are using in the middle east with our troops on OUR side of the border and it would stop well over 90% of the illegal traffic within a few weeks. Catch any jumpers, one year hard labor, no pay, second time caught, 5 years hard labor, no pay. they will get the message. Apply for legal status or *don'ty try*. Very few people want to totally restrict immigration, but uncontrolled anarchy is not the sign of a well run soverign nation. We have borders for a variety of perfectly legitimate reasons.

    Now enforce the laws on the books about hiring illegals in THIS nation, start making examples, throw high level business owners in jail(tyson foods execs, etc), mid level(owners of hotels, motels, restaurants, large corporate farmers, etc), down to the local contractor level (building trades, construction, etc) using pickup help, that would get rid of around 9% more, leaving 1%, and those rest could be picked up "normally" like what happens now.

    There's no reason it should be this easy for them to just waltz in, do whatever the hell they feel like, get drivers licenses, rent houses, get bank accounts, get their dozen kids all planted in the local school system paid with OTHER peoples local money for the most part, etc except by collusion with those places and the connivance of a government run by fatcats who are drinkin and coke snortin and sex slave exploiting drooling dweebs, exactly the same as their high level controller class compadres south of the border.

And that is why it won't happen, they collectively WANT the US to be second world status with rulers and serfs. the easiest way to do that is to smash the middle class. the easiest way to do that is export as many middle class jobs as possible and import as many legals or illegals as it takes to drop the remaining jobs down to serf status.

Which is exactly what is happening and what will continue to happen, no matter any feel good "immigration reform" nonsense they pass. They have been able to control this forever, they DON'T WANT TO.

And I really don't want to hear any of that "nation of imigrants" crap from anyone, that was cool way back when we still had the bulk of the nation as "free land" and very little laws and you could get by with work and barter with not much money. It's not like that now. We can't absorb the entire third world that wants to immigrate here, it just will not work.

As to mexico, check out this recent article:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060418 -1004-mexico-mistreatingmigrants.html

THAT is what the so called wonderful folks in Mexico with their even better "culture" do to THEIR illegal immigrants. Biggest bunch of hypocritical jerk offs out there.

Encryption is the answer to this, and it continues to amaze me that otherwise intelligent software developers continue to create software that does not utilize encryption.

95% of web traffic continues to be by HTTP, instead of the easily deployed HTTPS (and by easily I mean the entire infrastructure to support it already exists, both for clients and servers).

SMTP continues to be plaintext and bounced around like a ping-pong ball. The reasons for using encryption with SMTP are the same reasons for using letters in envelopes and not postcards. Two thousand years ago the Romans used wax seals on their private documents to ensure no one intercepted the message en route, yet every email on the planet is still there to be read.

Instant Messages continue not to be encrypted between recipients, and just like HTTPS the infrastructure is already there to support it. Why is it that it is off by default in a world where you can't buy a system with anything less than a 2+ GHz Celeron processor?

VoIP continues to go unencrypted over the Internet, for reasons that I can't even begin to fathom. We expect to have digital wireless phone calls--on a system first deployed over ten years ago--encrypted, but the brand new digital wired calls not? Thank God there are people like Phil Zimmerman out there.

Seriously, this is the most basic concept in an age where the people have every right to fear their government that most people distrust and believe is corrupt, in an age where the government (allegedly) mandates that all Internet traffic is made available for illegal spying, in an age where people have feared the NSA was already spying on citizens... the list goes on.

It is the responsibility and social responsibility of programmers and standards-makers to pursue wide encryption deployment, or the whole "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of speech away from the Internet?" cliche will be answered with "With my shoulder to the wall helping the government take away everything else."

What Robert Fisk was claiming is that there would be a bloody battle in Baghdad, that the Iraqi forces were clearly ready to resist in the capital, and he had seen their careful preparations to defend the city. Sorry, it didn't quite work out that way.

You sound like you are relishing that prospect, which is pretty sad. Are you on the side of the insurgency?

Iraqis aren't, why are you?

Here's a nice summary of the situation on the ground.

I have read many similar stories, so I'm confident of its accuracy.

Whenever someone tells me the Iraq war was a rotten thing for the people, we bombed them to pieces, they really loved Saddam, etc, I could argue with my own opinions until I was blue in the face. Instead,
I send them the opinion of an ordinary Iraqi.

Have things changed in the long, hard years since then? Not a chance.

So if you think there is something romantic about the insurgency, or that they are the good guys, I hope you'll consider what I've shown you. No matter how much you hate the US military, we're still the good guys in Iraq, and the people are still overwhelmingly on our side:

Hope that helps.

D

Here

If you can't be bothered to read that link, basically, San Diego's embroiled in a financial crisis that's being investigated by the FBI, and the recently-resigned city manager had a few thousand emails erased immediately after he stepped down which may POSSIBLY incriminate him or others in the muni government.

Of course, in that instance the email deletion is probably straight obstruction of justice, while this one is not involving any actual 'crime' other than possible breach of contract. But I figured it'd be food for thought.

Ideally, yes, but the problem is that "government" is made up of individuals who often put personal gain above the well being of all their constituents. In the case of the USA, those politicians are bought and paid for by corporations and organizations, much like we used to trade pogs and baseball cards when we were kids.

It's how we ended up with things like DMCA and copyright extension, which reinforces those competition barriers you mentioned with federal law enforcement. If this sort of thing continues, your solution could backfire on the public - big time.

This is the reason why most Latin American countries remain third world, despite having the exact same governmental structure as the US. Official acts do not happen without the mordida, which only the wealthy can pay, thus accumulating things to the wealthy. This sort of thing is spreading to the US. Randy Duke Cunningham took millions in bribes & is going to be sentenced
  today - if he gets a light one I think that will tell all of us which way this country is headed. But we all knew they are on the take - whenever some politician pushes anything odd like selling major shipping ports to the UAE, or promoting job outsourcing to India like that's a good thing, I first try to find out "what's in it for him?"

I wish I had an alternate solution, but unfortunately I do not.

He relished the task, launching a reign of terror which was brutal even by the standards of the Baath Party.

According to opposition groups, thousands were murdered.

Victims were made to drink petrol before being set alight or strapped to concrete blocks and tipped into the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.

Bodies were bulldozed into the ground and, according to aid agencies, Al-Majid was filmed selecting Shia prisoners for execution. It was for his earlier atrocities, though, that he gained his nickname. He masterminded chemical attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

On one occasion he rejected suggestions he had killed 182,000 people with the chilling reply: "No, it couldn't have been more than 100,000."

His most infamous outrage was the use of poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds at Halabja in 1988.

Human Rights Watch covers it.

The Telegraph has done a series of stories: here, here, and here:

Like thousands of other Kurds who lived in Halabja he had become inured to the frequent artillery bombardments launched by Baghdad's big guns across the valley.

It was not until he saw a yellow mist settling over the town that he realised this attack was different.

Within hours his five children had died an excruciating death. They were among about 5,000 Kurds killed by Saddam Hussein's poison gas on March 16, 1988, as he exacted a hideous revenge for their support of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Christian Science Monitor did this story:

The memory of every Iraqi Kurd is seared with vivid images of Baghdad's 1988 genocide against its own ethnic Kurds when troops loyal to the Iraqi strongman were under orders to kill every Kurdish male in northern Iraq between the ages of 18 and 55. During the Anfal campaign, rights groups say more than 100,000 men disappeared, 4,000 villages were destroyed, and 60 more villages were subject to chemical weapons attack.

Some 5,000 Kurds died during the gassing of Halabja alone. The photograph of a man shielding an infant with his body ? both killed by gas ? has become an icon of Kurdish suffering and of Iraqi war crimes.

Although a part of the defense establishment didn't believe it for a time, the State Department apparently didn't get the word even in 2001.

This site has photos.

Why this should be hard to believe when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons against the Iranians at the time, and more and more mass graves with thousands of bodies from simple mass murder each are turning up in Iraq, I'll neven know.

Saddam's government apparently even killed as many as 61,000 just in Baghdad alone.

The survey obtained Monday, which the polling firm planned to release

Which would make the Z5 our last best hope for peace? That's a pretty big burden to place on a lil ol' mp3 player.

And while I'm here, let me say MOD PARENT UP FOR BABYLON 5 REFERENCE! Do it for G'Kar

As far as domestically, we're told TV channels controlled by Fox News are conservative (or even fair and balanced) while NBC is liberal - NBC, which is owned by the military contractor General Electric. When small groups like the Workers World Party print their newspaper, and have protests against the US sending $1 billion a year in military expenses to Colombia (the only group locally that has them that I know of), the director of the FBI goes before Congress and says "Anarchists and extremist socialist groups--many of which, such as the workers' world party, reclaim the streets, and carnival against capitalism, have an international presence--at times also represent a potential threat in the United States."

There is not much immigration from China to the US. Many Chinese people have moved back to China in the past few decades. I think that says everything there is to say about existing freedom and opportunity.

Yeah, but how long is it going to take for someone to get a job? Most of those people (we're talking Bay Area, folks!) are living paycheck to paycheck, barely making it on, say, $50K/year. Figure a month per 10K salary to find a comparable job. So for each month, you are losing 2 months pay. That's why financial advisors are always saying "keep 6 months liquid assets on hand in case of problems."

Some hot-shit C guy could probably get another job right away. Do you really think those are the people getting laid off? No way, it's back-end admin staff. My personal experience as a hot-shot db person and dba has been, if you get another job while you are hot, you get it right away, but if you start from a dead stop after a layoff, the month/10K has been somewhat accurate, dead-on even if you call it losing 2 months pay for each month. The more bizzare thing IMO is that I've been both perm and contract, and that has made zero difference in how long jobs last (no matter what the nominal length of the contract was). People hire me, then realize what a great deal they've gotten, then new damagement come in and I'm boned. So, is an average of 2 or 3 years loyal or job-hopping? I would have thought not.

VW is laying off 20000.

Oh, PLEASE.

Michael Crichton is out to make money. He gets money for giving his "daring" speech on the rubber chicken circuit. He gets money on sales of his latest shlock thriller, which has evil grant-hungry climate scientists running weather control machines to terrorize the populace.

Here is what actual climate scientists have to say about the claims in his novel:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

At CISCOP, Chris Mooney reviews State of Fear:

http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

A look at the politics behind Crichton's crusade:

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/rober ts-fear/

Who are your going trust, Crichton or scientists?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/1/20/234126/ 976

OK. Maybe you can't trust scientists. How about the opinions of another author? Here is what Gregory Benford has to say:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/n ews_lz1e21benford.html

maybe our teeth can pick up radio stations someday :)

Someone remind me why we're spending billions to go to the moon again? Is there any real reason other than a presidential mandate? Don't get me wrong -- I'm all in favor of the space program.. bigger, better, faster, and more -- but what's the point in targetting a barren rock covered in very static, highly abrasive, and possibly toxic dust? Previous expeditions have suffered mechanical failures, seal leaks, etc. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there's the little issue of all the craters. More specifically, the lack of atmosphere that contributed to their formation. The (common?) estimate of 70-150 impacts per year would seem to ignore the 1,400 to 10,000 impacts per hour during Leonid meteor storms. While any lunar landing expedition would almost certainly avoid such periods, it doesn't bode well for any sort of permanent outpost which, again, makes me wonder what's the point of going back to the moon.

I don't blame the Corps exclusively for botching the job - I've already mentioned that their outsource suppliers. (BTW, I'm assuming your research exposing their shoddy deliveries is accurate, and would like to know more, from a reference you've got.)

I also note the Corps' budget was slashed, work even halted, in the years leading to Katrina's 2005 hurricane season. I don't blame just Bush, though he controls the budget both through proposing it and its reception in his Republican Congress. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has a lot of blood on her hands for allowing the budget to be slashed, for failing to ensure her home state got more than pork, but rather protection.

Katrina's devastation of a trusting New Orleans is not like the "want of a nail, a kingdom was lost" story. It wasn't a single fatal flaw in a system hanging by a thread. It's much more like the story in "Who Killed Davey Moore", where so many involved did their part, mostly by doing nothing when the victim's life depended to some extent on their action. Another way to look at the Katrina flood, and who's to blame, is to realize that New Orleans died for our sins. And since I was ringside in New Orleans during several hurricanes while I lived there, I feel obligated to tell the story, which of course implicates the legions who looked on in amusement rather than pitiful horror.

Well they are also stopping production of tubes in the USA. Something that's been done for years. Everyone's all about LCD, Plasma and various projection types these days, so Sony is going to work that angle harder.

I am just so glad I got what is probably the last best CRT based TV ever made ... the 34XBR960n. The picture quality is almost impossible to beat - at any price.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060120/n ews_1n20sony.html

Used CDs have already been a target of the RIAA. At least, a target of Garth Brooks, and a carrot drawing the RIAA's desire to double-dip royalties.
http://www.planetgarth.com/gbnews/garth049.shtml
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/200206 14-9999_1b14usedcds.html

I understand. I appreciate your dialoguing with me.

Now, onto your question. OBL never offered Clinton a truce. That's telling because one does not typically offer a truce if they are not threatened. I, for instance, would not offer you a truce now because you do not pose a threat to me. However, if we were in a duel to the death and you were about to run me through, I would probably try offer a truce.

Now OBL offered a truce before, in 2004. It was rejected by Britain. No surprise there. But, as I said, it's telling that there is no report of OBL offering a truce during Clintons term. What do we see that Clinton did?

In 1996, OBL was in Sudan. Sudan had wearied of him and was wanting to turn him over to someone else. This claim is generally accepted as legitimate that they had the where with all to do so. But, according to this report, "The official, asking not to be identified, said that although bin Laden had terrorist credentials in 1996, the United States did not have enough evidence for his indictment and dropped plans to capture him."

Ok, so Clinton passed. But what happened next? According to Wikipedia, OBL was alledged to be involved in the bombings of 3 US Embassies and in response "Clinton also signed an executive order authorizing bin Laden's arrest or assassination." But by this time it was too late, the last 2 years of Clinton's term was not enough to stop OBL.

8 months after President Bush's inauguration, OBL commenced his next and last attack on American soil. Really his last attack against American targets anywhere. For the last 4 years President Bush has been putting pressure on OBL. Granted, President Bush has not done in 4 years what President Clinton was not able to do in 2 years, but there's no saying that Clinton would have been able to do it within 4 years either. But what we do know is that President Bush has been taking out his organization and squeezing his elaborate terrorist networks, as well as put pressure on regimes that harboured terrorists and of course capturing Saddam and fighting terrorism in Iraq. Now we find OBL playing the truce card. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Apparently teenagers are increasingly handling sexual activity just fine. I would agree that the filming/pornography part has consequences which aren't known quite as well.

Now that I think about it it's odd that when taking these sorts of surveys when I was in school--the age of the partner was never much of a point of emphasis.

Maybe society has a secret?

Right. He actually said that the Treasury Bills that back Social Security are just worthless pieces of paper. Come to think of it, the connection might just be his lack of respect for paper .

This guy's wife (well, now widow) would agree.

"I know that the article summary took great pains to point out that few birds are out this far from land, but you just know that one or two will be killed by one of these turbines. It is inevitable."

Funny how the schools where they preach abstinence have much higher rates of teen pregnancy...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050902/n ews_1n2preg.html

And so perhaps the most promising element of President Bush's plan to reform the immigration system is his idea to, from this point forward, create 401(k)-type accounts where Mexican immigrant workers could invest part of their earnings. There the money would sit until the workers returned to Mexico, at which point they could draw it out. Bush's plan would put an end to the current system, and that's what hard-line conservatives hate about it. They're basically admitting that Social Security needs to rely on ill-gotten goods just to stay afloat.

It's amazing. Some of the same people who are constantly complaining about how illegal immigrants are the ruin of the civilization, including some Republicans in Congress, have no more qualms about letting them continue to prop up Social Security.

And people wonder why we have so much illegal immigration. Not me. I wonder why we don't have more of it.

Since Chrichton isn't a scientist I don't think we should mix his opinion piece with the work of scientists...
Here's a little light reading for perspective:
http://info-pollution.com/mc.htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/n ews_lz1e21benford.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2005/02/16/EDG49BAVBT1.DTL
etc..

...is that you won't get hassled by the staff who force you to prove that you are legally entitled to print copies of your own photos. It seems that staff at many places are suspicious of you if the quality of the photos is too high. For example, http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/perso naltech/20050530-9999-mz1b30snap.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/perso naltech/20050530-9999-mz1b30snap.html

http://progressive.org/mag_mc100405

Most US robotic technology is applied towards the military: smart missiles, driverless vehicles (there is a congressional mandate that one-third of all military vehicles be autonomous by 2015), "gun platforms" controlled by remote, pilotless military aircraft, smart mines. I think culture is playing a big role in the types of robots countries are building. Japan has a long love-affair with robots. The US seems to love its military. I had read a while back that european countries' robot technology for playing soccer is the best (not joking).

Couple links about US military robotics/smart platforms:
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldie rtech_Talon,,00.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040303/n ews_1c3darpa.html

Google is giving a wink and a nod to ... OSS

Erm, they run their multi-bilion dollar business on Linux.

One of prehistory's big questions is: Why did the Neanderthals become extinct at roughly the same moment that Homo sapiens arrived from Africa? At Sopena we may learn if there were significant differences in behaviors that gave an edge to modern humans. Could it have been diet or the way they processed food?

Yes. We look for remains like bones, charcoals from their fires and tools. From this we can learn how their diet changed over time. It's like we're digging through prehistoric domestic waste. Isotopic analysis of Neanderthal bones shows that they were almost entirely carnivores.

They mostly ate meat. And you need carbohydrates. We're finding that modern humans, coming from Africa, had a diet much more variable than Neanderthals. It's always been thought about the Neanderthal extinction that Homo sapiens appeared in Europe and outcompeted Neanderthals. But it's not so easy. Forty thousand years ago was the last ice age. In that time, many animals became extinct. If Neanderthals survived on mammal meat, and those animals were nowhere to be found, they were in trouble. And then you had modern man coming in from Africa, where there weren't seasons. They were eating seafood and vegetables and grasses, even fat extracted from bones by boiling them. It is possible this gave them an edge. We may find out.

In short, we survived because we had a more varied diet than they had. It may also explain why Neanderthals were taller than we are (they ate more meat), and why people have been getting taller from the XXth century onwards contrary to what was expected (inexpensive meat is more commonly available).

Adding insult to injury, the photofinishers refuse to give explicit guidelines as to what qualifies as "professional-looking" (in all likelihood there are no guidelines, of course). But an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune on this topic shows one customer's example of a photo rejected by Wal-Mart, alongside an equally good-looking photo that Wal-Mart, in its infinite wisdom, deemed amateurish enough to print.

Whatever. You're a moron if you think they don't use 'napalm'.

Results are 'remarkably similar' to using napalm

By James W. Crawley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 5, 2003

American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs - similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War - in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad.
[...]
Mark 77 Firebomb
"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. "Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

The only way my data is private at all at Google, especially with such a Big Brother law, is if it's encrypted, as well as its index, only decrypted on executing a search query, with all plaintext logs discarded after a few minutes - and warranteed private in Google's TOS.

Why does the government get to look at my data after 6 months, but it's so hard to get them to respond to FOIA requests within 6 months (or at all) when the info is sensitive? Isn't this related to this week's Supreme Court decision that Andersen wasn't guilty in shredding Enron documents that would have proven its complicity in that corporate catastrophe? Government can keep arbitrary secrets, corporations aren't liable for destroying evidence of crimes, but humans lives are an open book? How long can a country like that last, especially when smart people can go elsewhere?

"These days it's all secrecy; no privacy"
- The Rolling Stones, "Fingerprint File"

I'm in San Diego and people dressed up here.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/200505 19-9999-7m19star.html

well, you are right, there is a division of the communist government that does exactly that.
China goes undercover to sway opinion on Internet

It wasn't so long ago the Sheriff released a bunch of convicts because they couldn't afford to keep them in jail. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050419- 0444-ca-labudget.html

It wasn't so long ago (months?) that inmates were dying at a rather alarming rate in L.A. Sheriff's jails too. I wish I had a link, but it was very news-worthy on LA public radio. (KPCC covers L.A. news great) The phrase "Sheriff's excessive use of force" never quite stuck.

I wonder what the resource requirements are for a system that "tracks convicts wherever they go in real-time" claim. Presumably thousands of reader devices always on and connected to some server. Is there a database backend? Or, does it just store locations temporarily. Could you /. the server connected to the network of readers?

No shit? I don't want to be around when some mad scientist crosses one with this.

Wrong type of data loss..
I'm not talking about "the only copy" I'm talking about "any copy"

and I'm sorry, it was Wells Fargo, not BOA that had a laptop stolen.
THEN ANOTHER ONE
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040417/n ews_lz1ed17middle.html
the laptops contained THOUSANDS of customer records on the local hard drive.

Why?
proper security should mean data is not on an removeable, insecure machine. it should be backed up and remote always....

"There were warnings of potential sea spouts a couple of hours before that storm came in," says Burhans, adding that a sea spout can travel a mile or two, or even farther.

"There were warnings of potential sea spouts a couple of hours before that storm came in," says Burhans, adding that a sea spout can travel a mile or two, or even farther.

"There were warnings of potential sea spouts a couple of hours before that storm came in," says Burhans, adding that a sea spout can travel a mile or two, or even farther.

Does it really matter? The mars rovers don't have air in their tires.

Imagine the conversation with your energy supplier, a slightly more critical need but...

You do know that high electricity usage is one sign cops use when looking for indoor marijuana growing operations, right?

Sure they won't cut off your power. They'll just kick your door down.

Unless you can prove that EA expected them to work 80 hour weeks with no overtime ( assuming they weren't salary ... if so this point is moot )

Couple of problems there. For one, being salaried does NOT mean that you have to work ridiculous hours without compensation. All it means is that your work hours are unplanned and untracked. Businesses still can and do get in VERY hot water for "encouraging" their employees to work extreme hours without paying them sufficient compensation to warrant the time spent.

Now as I understand it, California does have a law on the books that requites programmers to be employed as exempt. However, this exemption requires that they make at least $85,000/yr. As I understand it, most of the EA programmers do not make quite that much, so they would have a strong case for mistreatment.

These people stayed at work of their own accord. Sure, they probably thought they were going to get fired if they didn't - maybe the atmosphere of the environment led them to believe this, or maybe it was simply the popular perception of game programmers having to work 80 hour weeks to prove their merit

Simply convincing a judge that EA was putting pressure on the employees to work long hours should be sufficient. Granted, I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you don't need a "smoking gun" to prove the working environment. Unfortunately for EA, some of the accounts seem to suggest that such a smoking gun exists.

A few links for further research:

http://www.purdue.edu/hr/LeadingEdition/LEdi_704_e xempt_nonexempt.htm
http://www.fairmeasures.com/overtime.html#hours (Note the 72 hour work-week in CA. 80 hrs would violate that.)
http://www.ahipubs.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/010030.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040822/n ews_1b22ot.html

And that is as eloquent as I can get. This article...and I stress _this article_ doesn't discuss the manner of data, doesn't talk about the type of data considered, doesn't try to explain the nature of the models, and doesn't even attempt to explain how Barnett makes the connection from ocean currents to global warming. It's basically says nothing more than "this smart guy says his models accurately mimick global warming, and this proves that humans are at fault".

And as I read this article, it seems to me that all his report does is prove that global warming is driving climate change.

Incidentally, most people don't realize that there's a catch 22 effect which may have nothing to do with humans. The article I linked to above states that the Ocean's absorb 90% of thermal energy in the atmosphere. Each liter of seawater can contain as much as .9L of dissolved CO2 (this doesn't include CO2 which is sequestered in marine organisms either). As the water is heated, it gives off CO2. If global warming is the result of solar forcing, and that solar forcing is causing the release of billions of tons of CO2 from the worlds oceans, then greenhouse gasses are the cause, not the effect.

Having read the theory and run some back of the envelope calculations myself, I still refuse to believe mankind is capable of significantly altering the worlds ecology. We are but unwitting victims of forces well beyond our control.