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My vote is for more decentralized power generation using nuclear batteries.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2050039,00.html

They are small. They don't rely on full blown nuclear fission to create power. They are maintenance free. Pretty much every failure mode is that they shut down - no secondary equipment required, the shutdown is built-in to the nature of the reaction.

Bury one in a concrete vault in every neighborhood. If some idiot manages to open it up he'd be on fire by the time he gets close enough to mess with one - they run pretty hot.

They'll run for a dozen years or so, then you swap them out with a new one. You recycle the old one, the amount of unusable nuclear waste is about the size of a baseball.

Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenet and the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open—that is to say, nonproprietary—standards, none of which were set by Microsoft. Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft's long arms around it.

Time Magazine - 12/22/1995

China has some very serious external dependencies. Iron, coal (the high-grade stuff needed for coking steel, they have plenty of sulfur-laden crap-coal domestically), OIL, export markets for cash (remember, the yuan is not a full participant in international financial systems; they do their external trade mostly in dollars, somewhat in Euros).

The iron and coal comes largely from Australia. Look at recent power politics being played between Australia and China over Chinese attempts to buy majority ownership in Australian mining companies; when Australia blocked those sales, the Chinese retaliated by jailing visiting Australian mining company executives as "spies". That incident didn't last long, but it shows the Chinese feeling of vulnerability and the willingness to play hardball to address that. The oil comes from all over the world. Almost all of it travels via sea. And the number one naval power in the world, by an overwhelming margin? The United States. Look at recent Chinese military efforts to develop a blue-water navy, to secure external naval ports in China-friendly host nations (Venezuela, Pakistan), and to seize the disputed Paracel and Spratley Islands, which have billions of barrels of suspected oil reserves.

Then recall the economic event which Japan used as a reason to attack the United States in 1941: the American and British decision to deny oil to Japan due to their "activities" in Japan. Everyone involved has knows this is something that can get out of hand.

Don't dis the Time Person of the Year. I think it is a great award.

Disclosure: I'm the 2006 recipient

The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.

The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.

Can you cite any studies or well known facts to support these statements? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd just like to see something other than some anonymous person's assertions on a tech chatboard.

Private schools can and do kick out trouble-causing students, and there is a direct correlation between the presence of such children and the overall performance of a class. This is probably a larger factor than merely selecting the academic elite, who themselves may come from abusive or otherwise troubled homes and who may bring such problems into the classroom.

However, the academic elite by and large tend to follow their economic class's trends. In other words, affluent parents spend more on their children's education, give them better tools and more opportunities to do well, and effectively can buy a smoother pathway to the top with fewer obstacles. SAT scores are correlated with wealth.

To argue that private school teaching "is probably inferior to public schools" is a broad and unsubstantiated claim. Leaving aside the fact that some kids attend private school for non-academic reasons (their parent went there, it's smaller, it's more prestigious), we can ask--do private schools really help kids perform better? It's controversial, according to this Time blog, but a separate study shows that Catholic schools do a better job overall.

There are many excellent public schools in the U.S. and Canada; Montgomery County in MD for example, and Middlesex County in Massachusetts are superb--well funded, high academic standards, good support for the arts, and involved parents. The high performing schools in these districts, though, are in the affluent areas like Belmont and Newton and Lexington in Massachusetts. The lower income Middlesex schools in Waltham and Watertown are down a rung or two.

As for the quality of teachers, it's disputable that private schools hire inferior teachers at lower pay, at least in the U.S. This was more true decades ago, but in recent years private schools have had to compete for a shrinking pool of good teachers and they have raised salaries and benefits nearly to union scale. Nonetheless, private schools have remained a desirable destination because the students tend to be better behaved, the troublemakers are removed, and there tends to be more parental buy-in. This only makes sense; when you're paying $16,000 a year for your child, you tend to have more and stronger opinions about how the school is run.

It's not like we'd have an explosion of those other crimes as people have to be into those things for it to work. Now gang members may push it, but you have to have customers in order to run any business, even illegal ones. Evidence shows that there is not only a decrease in crime but a decrease in drug usage as well after legalization. More importantly, a substantially decrease in usage among teenagers. See: Portugal

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

The reality is, those people who had the "easy" life of selling drugs, now actually have to get jobs, and this also helps improve impoverished neighborhoods. The whole reason drugs are rampant in poor neighborhoods is because of how easy it is to make quick money. When your option is to work at McDonalds for $7/hour or work on the corner making some quick cash, the choices are much harder. But when the guy on the corner has to face up against walmart, he's going to lose, and thus he'll have to get a real job.

Sadly, while the poster is clearly trolling with his deliberately lopsided history, the US did put well over 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. These camps, while offering better conditions in most respects, bore far too close a resemblance to concentration camps for anyone with a conscience. look it up is you need to know more.

Have you ever heard of the German American Bund? It was one of several organizations of German Americans in the 1930s-40s. It was a significant pro-Nazi force in the United States. If you watch this video, you will think your eyes are tricking you. But yes, that is the United States, and yes, the giant figure you can see in the back of some of the stages is George Washington. Was the Bund potentially dangerous? How could the government not believe it was a possibility? There were a large number of reports of "Fifth Columnists , such as the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps in Czechoslovakia, and the Selbstschutz in Poland that aided the German invaders. There were similar reports out of Norway, Denmark, and other places.

This is Time magazines description of how things looked in 1940 as the US watched country after country fall to Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy and be brutalized in a terrible fashion.

WAR & PEACE: Science of Treason - Monday, Aug. 26, 1940
> The German-American Bund,* with 71 units strategically located in industrial centres or near munitions works, with 25,000 drilled and disciplined members, is only the most widely publicized of Hitler's U. S. supporters. There are in addition 10,000 other Hitler-heiling Germans in the U. S.; 400,000 Germans who support Hitler but keep quiet about it. There are lecturers, writers, organizers, technical experts, economists, historians. A German professor of history at the University of Hawaii has contributed articles on the U. S. Navy to the Nazi magazine Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, to which professors of the University of California and of Miami University in Ohio also contributed.

> There are some 200,000 Italian fascists in the U. S.

> Not counting fellow travelers, there are 100,000 U. S. Communists who are now actively collaborating with Nazis and Italian fascists, and who are more strategically placed than either in U. S. industry and trade unions. **

> With native-born fascists included, the fifth column numbers more than a million. The main task of cleaning it out is a job for the FBI; laymen can take little direct action beyond reporting suspicious behavior to the Government. But every citizen can contribute to a change in the national atmosphere—"not of lethargy, not of fear, not of defeat, but invigorated by the defiant faith which we have known in the past as typically American."

I've heard a report that 60,000 Germans & German Americans were arrested, and apparently at least 10,000 were held in camps. There may have been more. This story doesn't seem to get much attention, and the documents seem to be harder to come by.

As to the Japanese, there were many of them that, like the Germans, also had patriotic organizations tying them to Japan.

From: Bainbridge Island Japanese American Memorial Ignores Wartime Realities

Before the war many thousands of Japanese Americans and Japanese citizens living in the U.S. belonged to militant and patriotic organizations such as the Imperial Comradeship Society and the Japanese Military

Cigarette companies specifically advertised their brands as being the "healthy choice". They would claim to be endorsed by doctors and dentists the way toothpastes do now. They would claim that the filters made them safer, or that they used "mild" or "light" tobacco. They would get testimonials from famous athletes and opera singers, with the obvious subtext that these people are clearly healthy. Of course, the stars giving the testimonials often didn't actually smoke... but that's no different from most modern celebrity endorsements.

Here's some examples. My favorite is the Lucky Strikes claiming endorsement by 20,679 physicians -- no more, no less!

I'm going to repeat the comment I made on the Time story covering this 2 hours ago:

I hate to tell you, but it never happened. This is an AMD TV commercial (available on Youtube) saying, basically, run Nvidia and get raided for running a pot growing operation due to excessive power usage.

Oh, and a side note, in the US, the power companies DO regularly report users with sudden spikes of excessive power usage that are indicative of grow ops. This data is volunteered by the power companies, and the police do not need a warrant to collect it.

If you're so keen to convince me, why not provide a few links of your own? We can go link for link -- I'll stand you the Wikipedia link.

Here are a few on the cult issue specifically:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/falungong3.htm
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,165166,00.html

"Now that people can do art and music without being lined against a wall and shot"

Now they just disappear: Ai Weiwei

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/16/aiweiwei.china/?hpt=C1
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2063218_2063273_2063222,00.html

"China is a command economy, but it isn't an extreme country (now that the nuts like Mao are cozily dead)"

WTFever. Tiananmen Square.

I said it a few comments down... but I will take lawyers, polisci majors, bankers, and economists who support liberal democracy in a heartbeat over scientific leaders who endorse prison camps, massive censorship, brutal suppression of political dissent, for some reason want to crush the most non-threatening people on the face of the planet, and who (at the very minimum tolerate) endorse forced sterilization!

Regarding forced sterilisation...Uh, why would that ever be considered by a leader of any professional background in countries other than India or China? The U.S. and China are of similar geographical size yet the U.S. population is roughly 300M but China's population is 1.3 BILLION. What other options are there besides watching people starve to death or bankrupting the economy with social services that feed an oversized population? Also, those generalisations you made about "scientific leaders" is unfounded. Judging by your tone and criticisms, I'm guessing you're a pro-lifer, a conservative and a bible-thumper who despises what your type refers to as the "intellectual elite".

We feel Iran is terrible because we demonize them, for our political reasons. Saudi Arabia is a terrible place. Women are not allowed to go out of their home without a male chaperon. They are not allowed to drive! Just a few days ago, a Saudi woman felt the urge to revolt, knowing the dangers to her life and wellbeing. What did she do? For the first time, she went out driving, for four days. Now, this is scary! Iran does not restrict women on driving, nor do they force them to dress up like ninjas. Read up at http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/16/rebel-on-the-road-saudi-woman-protests-driving-ban/

I said it a few comments down... but I will take lawyers, polisci majors, bankers, and economists who support liberal democracy in a heartbeat over scientific leaders who endorse prison camps, massive censorship, brutal suppression of political dissent, for some reason want to crush the most non-threatening people on the face of the planet, and who (at the very minimum tolerate) endorse forced sterilization!

Now the company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing water to leak.

They're saying there "may have" been a breach - not that there "was" a breach.
What's really strange, is a lot of reputable sources are reporting this wrong.

In fact, a note from the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) quotes Banri Kaieda, the nation's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister, as saying that it is "a fact" that there were holes created by the meltdown. That would likely mean at least some of the uranium fuel is now lying on the basemat below, or perhaps even outside the concrete containment.

But nowhere in their linked report does it say anything about a breach in the containment vessel.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said it is a fact that the
water injected into the No.1 reactor leaked away because of a hole or holes
created by the meltdown.
[...]
The operator, TEPCO, said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods in the reactor are believed to have melted and sunk to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel.
TEPCO says the melted fuel has apparently cooled, even though much of the injected water is leaking through holes at the bottom of the vessel.
Under a plan decided last month, the utility was to fill up the containment vessel with water and set up a system to circulate the water through a heat exchanger.

Not that I can really blame them too much for mixing up some of the terms, considering how many different "vessels" there are.

Though, it does seem TIME got it right:

It's important to note, however, that the worst has not come to pass, nor do experts believe that it will. In that scenario, all of the rods would have fully melted, collapsed, and burned through the pressure and containment vessels, causing a large radioactive leak outside.

WSJ too:

Within 16 hours, the reactor core melted, dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and created a hole there. By then, an operation to pump water into the reactor was under way. This prevented the worst-case scenario, in which the overheating fuel would melt its way through the vessels and discharge large volumes of radiation outside.

The nuclear industry lacks a technical definition for a full meltdown, but the term is generally understood to mean that radioactive fuel has breached containment measures, resulting in a massive release of fuel.

I'd like to read more about your second link, but it says the NRC report is "confidential". Got a closer-to-the-source link? Or at least a newer one? (the report is from March)

Well said. Unfortunately the Cartoon World is the one in which most of us live, so the moronic "they hate us for our freedom" narrative always gets good traction here.

Actually, "they hate us for our freedom" is not too far from the truth. Everyone here is playing coy when talking about the goals of terrorists. Of course the terrorists don't care if TSA is feeling up our kids or the government is asking for ID to fly. That's not the freedom they are after.

Sorry, but the goal of "terrorists" is an worldwide Caliphate, or Islamic state.

So govern between the people by that which God has revealed (Islam), and follow not their vain desires, beware of them in case they seduce you from just some part of that which God has revealed to you
—[Qur'an 004:049

It's not our Bill of Rights that they hate, it's our freedom or religion and/or freedom FROM religion. It starts with wanting us out of their "holy land" (Saudi Arabia), which then expands to the entire Mid-East, the Africa, Europe, Asia, and finally the Americas.

Time Magazine can explain it better than I can:

After the infidels have been expelled from the land of Islam, bin Laden, like other Islamic radicals, foresees the overthrow of current regimes across the Muslim world and the establishment of one united government strictly enforcing Shari'a, or Islamic law. This vision harks back to the age of the caliphs, the successors to Muhammad who ruled Islam's domain from the 7th century to the 13th. What might a caliphate look like today? In bin Laden's view, it would look something like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which he has praised as "among the keenest to fulfill [Allah's] laws." Bin Laden may imagine himself to be a potential new caliph. One of the titles he uses is "emir," which means ruler. However, he swears allegiance to (and thereby ranks himself below) the Taliban ruler, Mullah Mohammed Omar, so whatever political ambitions bin Laden may have are not yet on display. ...
But for bin Laden, the game is not as simple as taking Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Says Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council staff member now writing a book on religious terror: "He is looking for a world in which Islam regains the dominant role, and naturally that would include oil and nukes. But to say it's about oil and nukes suggests it's not a metaphysical struggle, which it is for him. He thinks this is a big moral battle in which he's got Allah's sanction to attack the West." In a 1996 proclamation, bin Laden asked, "O Lord, shatter their gathering, divide them among themselves, shake the earth under their feet and give us control over them."

They don't hate us because we have freedoms. They hate us because we are currently free from them. So it would seem that "they hate us for our freedom" is not so moronic after all.

http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governments/

That article made a lot more sense to me and had significantly less amounts of fanaticism.

train huh? well coming soon to a train near you is... TSA. Enjoy your complimentary grope for their grand opening.

http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/10/the-political-prospects-of-a-no-ride-list/

China accounts for 19.8% of world manufacturing. The US is at 19.4%. We still produce a shit ton of stuff.

- US 'manufacturing' is a fancy way for assembly lines of parts, made elsewhere.

If you produce 10 times more frying pans than people could possibly ever or buy, you're not contributing extra to the economy.

- and that's the manufacturer's problem, who is forcing him to produce 10 times more frying pans than can be sold? Clearly that manufacturer is in the wrong business and will go out of business. Production without use - that's government job. Real production obviously has consumers in mind.

However consumption without production is 0% likely.

but the Chinese culture doesn't have the appetite for consumption that exists in the West (and the US especially). Not to mention, a lot of those billion people can't afford a lot of the things China produces.

- oh boy, what are you saying, that Chinese do not like to buy stuff.

Are we talking about the same Chinese here? You are full of shit on this, don't you understand? People want things. The only reason they don't buy - is if they do not have the purchasing power to buy. This happens in government manipulated economy, not in real economy.

The reason Chinese are not buying is because they are robbed of their purchasing power by their government through inflation of money printing. When they stop this nonsense, they'll be buying plenty.

However, this recession is hitting China just as hard as it's hitting the US. Chinese unemployment is rising, and college grads there can't find jobs either. With China's economy dependent on exporting goods (for the time being), they will suffer until people start buying again.

- in China they are experiencing immediate affects of the monetary inflation - price hikes. Their food even went up by 15-25% last year. Obviously they are cutting down on other spending. The reason I already explained - government printing money to match US Fed printing.

In terms of the trade gap?

- that's the only real measurement. What would I care if you printed a bunch of green papers to pay back some debt, if they went down in value by another 99%?

Of course, it also doesn't help that the biggest Chinese companies are state owned and heavily subsidized.

- if that's their reason to prop up US dollar, then they'll have riots and revolutions on their hands, just like Middle East had.

Eh, maybe, but once China actually lets it's currency float, it's good are no longer cheap, and who wants to buy their low quality goods if they're not cheap?

- Fucking jesus. They have over 1.2 billion people, sitting there, waiting for their currency to start buying something. Give me a break, it all comes out of your idiotic: "Chinese do not want to buy stuff like Americans do" nonsense.

We've got a large, relatively educated workforce and a decent chunk of world production. If people would stop putting everything on credit cards and taking loans for shit they don't need, we'd be a'ok.

- and how are you going to do that exactly, if your government doesn't let the investment to actually stay valuable and instead prints the dollar like trees are going to disappear and has near the highest taxes in the world and has the most regulations in the world?

Good luck competing with the world while you are promoting this anti-business agenda via government regulations, money printing, taxes, subsidies, monopolies, competition destruction, socialist programs and wars.

There's a pretty simple example that proves you wrong, you even mentioned it in your post: Japan's warning system.

Here's a pretty good article about it: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2059780,00.html

In principle, I think this is a very good idea. I'm not American and I wish we (Canada) had something like this in place, I think it's stupid the US doesn't yet. Everyone here is raging about the privacy / spam concerns, but do you really think that'll end up being a problem? It'll be a one way push and they'll use it for emergency services (I hope). You don't see people turning on the old school TV emergency tone / message for political spam do you?

In today's world of instant communications, it seems silly to not have a way for the government to send out emergency notifications quickly.

It ain't about Apple. It's about citizen's right to privacy.

Yeah, and we're really kicking that one in the butt...

Gimme a break! Apple keeps some cell-tower data in a database they didn't size correctly (data that was way too coarse-grained and coarse-timed to do much of anything anyway), then they FIX it without even being made to, and yet THEY are the bad guys? Gimme a break!

Read the linked Time Magazine article, above, if you want to identify REAL eeeee-vil. And the Courts are just FINE with it.

I beg to differ, a stupid victim is in part responsible and so do in a manner of speaking by your statement about Sony failing to apply due diligence. Which of course they hadn't. Researchers months prior discovered that they not only did not have a firewall, but also, unpatched server software. These researchers notified Sony of this vulnerability but Sony ignored them.

I understand how stock options work.

And no, I don't believe just building a runway, no matter how long, will attract jumbo jets, unless there is some other attraction in the area and the jet and runway are just means to that end.

Perhaps a better analogy are the recent studies in paying students for performance.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html

The result of paying students for good grades? Basically, it doesn't work. Why? Because if you don't know what you need to do to get good grades, money won't change that. When asked how they would react to an offer of money in exchange for better grades, most students talk about cheating or finding some 'system' of acing standardized tests.

Which makes sense. You offer to pay for grades, students try to give you grades. And nothing more.

If you take a different approach, offer to pay students for doing the things that can lead to better grades--reading a book, completing assignments, etc--then you get the thing you really want, students who learn how to work to learn, and better grades happen as a consequence.

If you reward your CEO for higher stock price, you shouldn't expect anything other than a higher stock price. Don't expect a more stable company. Don't expect to be prepared for changes in technology. Don't expect benefit to the long term buy-and-hold investor.

If you reward your CEO for giving quality leadership, the company grows and the stock increases in value as a consequence.

The issue with the difference is how you measure the quality of a CEO. If your only measure is stock price, then absolutely, pay your CEO in stock and options.

I think my point about options being a worthless bribe stands. If a CEO is paid $millions in salary, yet isn't capable or motivated to do a good, honest job, then all the options in the world won't yield a better or more honest CEO.

or the Delta 60 miles ahead.

You mean instead of carrier pigeons, carrier RATS? Couldn't resist, considering a recent story about Delta.

"Our society doesn't have the will for one-way trips."

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/12/why-volunteer-for-a-one-way-mission-to-mars/
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/12/space-cadets-400-people-volunteer-for-one-way-trip-to-mars/

And, several more hits on Google. Society at large didn't have the balls necessary to sail with that silly Italian named Columbus, either. The job will be done, sooner or later, all the same. SpaceX seems the most likely candidate at this point in time, but it may be China or the EU that gets it done first. Russians? Probably not, but they could surprise me too. India? Ditto - probably not, but they could surprise me.

Not to mention most theaters have 2D showings of 3D films, all you have to do is watch for show times and pay attention to the descriptions. Or if you want to see it with people who want 3D there's always these things.

According to Apple, Apple sends itself your precise location data and shares that location data with whoever it wants to...

http://markey.house.gov/docs/applemarkeybarton7-12-10.pdf

As far as I know, Apple isn't the phone company and shouldn't be in the business of tracking its users from cell tower to cell tower or Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi.

What if Toyota or GM or Ford started tracking the users of its cars? How freaky would that be? Actually, if they partner with Apple, they can track you in your car. That Orwellian 1984 Ad from Apple, back in 1984, really makes sense now...except the roles are reversed. If Google does this too, then Rotten Google indeed.

Precise Orwellian location tracking, massive sales in authoritarian China...hmm...
http://techland.time.com/2011/04/21/iphone-growth-suddenly-soaring-in-china/

= 9J =

This isn't going to be a popular opinion, but here goes: just because you work for a company that (ab)uses SEO, doesn't mean you have no work ethic and copy-paste everything. Content that is copied word for word does worse on rankings than content that isn't, so eHow actually does try to screen it out via an automatic plagiarism checker. They also have quality standards, haphazardly enforced as they can be.

That doesn't mean that everyone knows what they're talking about, and that bad content doesn't get through. But assuming that if you're a member of a company that employs thousands of people, you must be making a living off copy-pasting is quite ignorant.

See also: this article; it's admittedly a bit out of date.

Why do Japanese students tend to do so much better then american students, simple they compete in mental subjects, the grades are posted on a giant board for everyone to see, and are ranked from smartest to dumbest. In america grades are confidential, we can't risk students self esteem getting hurt when they are made fun of for being dumb

That's one way to do it. But Finland gets even better results using an absolute minimum of grading, streaming, ranking, testing, and public shaming of the "dumbest" -- with far fewer hours spent in school or private tuition to boot. And I dare say it results in happier, less stressed kids too. Of course I'm not saying that just throwing out the grading is sufficient to improve standards -- the linked article has a little more detail on the other important factors (well-trained, well-paid, respected teachers, for a start).

Hearing this story reminds of a daily bit a local morning radio talk show did, "The Idiot of the Day" but i think he wins "Idiot of the decade"

Sorry lil Timmy, but Santa ain't real!

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/09/that-silly-radio-show-listener-calling-in-hes-probably-an-actor/

-AI

This SO reminds me of the review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture from Time magazine, where the reviewer confused the Klingons that were on board three ships destroyed by Vger with the non-existent crew of Vger itself.

While I am not defending the entirety of Independence Day, I do feel compelled to point out that the alien was using the vocal cords in the body of Brent Spiner to talk, not the non-existent vocal cords in its own body.

Far more incredible to me is how the aliens could not patch their OS and update their virus signatures...

Considering Belgium has been doing fine without a government for months, I'm not seeing a problem with a government shutdown. Probably it's the best thing that could happen. It's caused enough trouble already.

Sadly, most cable companies still wish that everyone had this.

From today:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/04/the-fashionistas-were-right-designer-labels-might-really-improve-your-life/?hpt=T2

All citizens must live active lives as consumers, for the good of the economy!

Is that you, George Bush?

Outlaws are going to become fucking billionaires. They are going to spend a lot of that money arming their own private armies. Thousands of innocent people will be slaughtered and displaced.

This has already happened. As for the 1000s displaced and slaughtered, well, it's been happening since the dawn of time.

Right, perhaps we need some citations from 2006 and 2008 or maybe read some books from 15 years ago to find that indeed the ol' US of A is falling behind instead of anecdotes of a cheating driving school.

I'm NOT an American, but I have lived and worked in the USA and one of my daughters went to school there and I'll tell you, children are promoted even if they should have to take remedial classes or flunk, so spare the anecdotes and give us some hard statistics to prove the USA is not falling behind.

Women under the age of 30 in urban centers make more money than men. More women today are graduating with college degrees than men. This has been happening for years.

Basically, in places where the average man doesn't burn out his body working on a farm or in construction, women are making more money than men.

The feminist movement is over. They won. Women are now equal or superior to men.

It is time to end Title IX. It is time to bring education standards back up so that we can make sure little Johnny gets the same education little Suzie does.

Before you go screaming about oppression, consider the scale of the numbers.

    In 2002, there were about 46,000 licensed internet cafes, and 150,000 unlicensed internet cafes. (Ref: Time Magazine)

    In 2000, there were about 40,000 licensed cafes, growing to 168,000 in 2009.
    (Ref: Investors Hub)

    If you apply the same ratio of licensed vs unlicensed from the Time article (3.2:1), it could be extrapolated that there were also approximately 538,000 unlicensed cafes. So if 130,000 were closed down over a period of 5 years, that would be a whopping 26,000 per year. So roughly 5% of the illegal cafes were shut down. That could easily be attributed to disgruntled customers, ex-employees, failure to pay bribes to local law enforcement, or law enforcement needing to show that they are making an effort against such illegal activity.

    Someone else can work out the trends to show my numbers are a little off, but not terribly far.

    These tiny numbers in relation to the size of the country, population, and number of cafes are insignificant.

    I'd be willing to bet similar trends could be shown in the US relating to liquor license violations, marijuana grow house busts, and other associated nefarious activities. If it weren't China and the Internet, it wouldn't have even been news.

    If you're going worry about such things, worry about those who end up in prison here in the US on petty charges, that range from perfectly legal to gray areas in many other states and countries.

From your article:

"The Japanese people, rightly, are hailing the personnel at the site as heroes. Not the least impressive aspect of their performance is the way they appear to be tackling the situation with such professionalism as not to carelessly risk their own well-being."

So, nothing in OP's point really changes.

That said, I'll agree with your article that the media hypes. . Everything. . to the nth degree, and that this practice severely detracts from its credibility, but in this case there is I think legitimate cause for concern. The Japanese nuclear industry does not exactly have a sterling record for safety or transparency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/652169.stm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992195-1,00.html

Note that both of those articles were written over a decade before this incident, and by well-respected news agencies. Japan has a long and, frankly, sordid history of poor safety practices in the nuclear industry. Whether this incident will be a major disaster or a minor incident as your source predicts remains to be seen, but that people are worried is hardly surprising.

After all, if you're face to face with a cobra, you're probably going to be nervous even if one guy claims that its poison glands have been removed.

There are 600 coal plants in the US, generating about 2000TW. A few recent projects for large scale solar range from 50MW to 700MW. It would only take a few hundred of these to make a significant dent in the need for US coal and nuclear generating capacity. What is lacking is determination, and money. The fossil fuel subsidy per year is about $70B and roughly $13B per Nuclear plant. That should pay for a whole lot of alternatives including solar.

Wasn't he Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938?

Time's Man of the Year award isn't necessarily for people who do good. It's to recognize people who, for better or worse, have done the most to influence the events of the year.

Wasn't he Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938?

1) Even after serving out the sentence? IMO that falls under cruel and unusual punishment.

2) Nowadays even not so serious crimes can count as felonies.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1553510,00.html

Letter to Congressional representatives:

Please get rid of Daylight Savings Time. It is a farce. It does not really help save energy or stimulate the economy. Instead it causes an increase in accidents, suicides, heart attacks and other health problems in addition to the simple inconvenience of the change.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/12/is-daylight-saving-time-bad-for-your-health/

"According to experts on circadian rhythms, the hour shift in sleep schedule from Daylight Saving Time can have serious effects on some people's health, particularly in people with certain pre-existing health problems. One study found that men were more likely to commit suicide during the first few weeks of Daylight Saving Time (DST) than at any other time during the year, and another study showed that the number of serious heart attacks jumps 6% to 10% on the first three workdays after DST begins. Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, an assistant professor of comparative medicine and cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University, theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, to which these individuals may be more susceptible."

Phew... I'm glad you told them. They'll be sure to read through Slashdot looking for comments like yours to base their policies on.

Letter to Congressional representatives:

Please get rid of Daylight Savings Time. It is a farce. It does not really help save energy or stimulate the economy. Instead it causes an increase in accidents, suicides, heart attacks and other health problems in addition to the simple inconvenience of the change.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/12/is-daylight-saving-time-bad-for-your-health/

"According to experts on circadian rhythms, the hour shift in sleep schedule from Daylight Saving Time can have serious effects on some people's health, particularly in people with certain pre-existing health problems. One study found that men were more likely to commit suicide during the first few weeks of Daylight Saving Time (DST) than at any other time during the year, and another study showed that the number of serious heart attacks jumps 6% to 10% on the first three workdays after DST begins. Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, an assistant professor of comparative medicine and cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University, theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, to which these individuals may be more susceptible."

I hate to bring it up, but that's what everyone said *last year* when the iPad 1 launched

And they were pretty much spot on.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/05/24/doctor-behind-vaccine-autism-link-loses-license/

>Internet is the last thing on the average Libyan's mind right now.

Haven't you been watching the news? Libyans in the east were described by journalists as overjoyed to meet them and finally be able to tell their story to the outside world. Ben Wederman of CNN said people were throwing candy and juice into his car in Benghazi.

BBC's John Simpson reports rebels shot down an airplane, then brought pieces of it to show him and his film crew plus took a video on their phones.

Why would they do that? They want to get their side of the story out.

Not everybody's going to be on the Internet, but not everybody needs to be. Some are on the front. Some have rifles, others man the anti-aircraft guns. Some are on the cleanup committee. And some will be on the media and Internet committee.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html

The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves
Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010