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As far as I can tell from various reports out there, there are enough technical difficulties with cellphone-to-ground service on planes that they are not simply going to allow regular cell phone use:

Ars Technica reports that there are two bans in place: the FAA for flight safety reasons, and the FCC for cellphone network interference reasons. (A cell phone can reach too many towers at once, thus interfering with towers other than the one it's actually communicating with) The USA Today article quoted by the Ars article discusses all this pretty well.

So, companies are trying to come up with a solution. One company, AirCell, has been granted "a patent" (US Pat 6,408,180) for facilitating cell phone use in planes. AirCell has a press release touting their patent and technology. USA Today said Aircell would charge a roaming fee to use their network.

The patent discusses the various methods used to reduce interference with ground stations, like antenna polarization.

It also seems to discuss an additional cell site on the plane itself, that is designed to convince all the passengers' phones to talk to it, so that it can efficiently relay the signals in a non-interfering mannor down to the ground.

It ALSO seems like they talk about redesigned ground sites to facilitate this, so you have to wonder what the involvement of each of the cell phone providers will have to be.

(skimming patents is not easy... I might be wrong, but the images help. In TIFF format: diagram of relay system on the plane, special cell sites vs normal cell sites)

It just hurts to think about the infrastructure investment in all these different, competeing cell technologies in the US. Wouldn't it make lots of sense to just GIVE UP and legislate/regulate a single standard. Say, GSM for example. Works for Europe... :)

- Peter

Is there any other real option for the government? I'm assuming everyone here wants a distro of Linux to be the government's OS of choice. Which one? Red Hat? Are they a large enough company to ensure 24/7 tech support on the governments' 140,000 computers? I don't know, and I don't think the government does either.

Which is why you don't just send some guy down to the local DC branch of CompUSA to pick up a RedHat box. If you look at the USA Today piece referenced in yesterday's /. article you will see that the city of Munich first hired a technology strategist company, Unilog Integrata to look at the situation. This company then reviewed the requirements, outlined various trade-offs in the two options, then recommended the SuSE/IBM option.

You can bet that 24/7 support for 140,000 computers is well within Big Blue's capabilities.

Like this one?

or something like that.

Oh wait, eBay wouldn't sell stolen items?

He just woke up from a coma and still thinks Reagan is president.

A nice synopsis of the tank types, the flights they were used on, and so on:

What's this about Columbia using an old tank?

The tank being used on Columbia was the older style. NASA has gotten exemptions from the EPA to use the old style tanks and foam. They happened to use an old one on this launch.

"(NASA) said the piece that broke off and hit the wing of the Columbia was PROBABLY THE OLD FOAM, NOT THE NEW, MORE TROUBLE-PLAGUED MATERIAL.

When it had trouble with the replacement foam, NASA applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for an exemption from the CFC ban, saying, 'no viable alternative has been identified.' It gained the exemption in 2001, and still uses that foam in a few spots on the shuttle fleet."

--ANDREW C. REVKIN (NYT 2/6/03)

Meanwhile, astronauts have mentioned the problems with the foam since the earliest days of the program:

During the early missions, astronauts even complained over their cockpit radios during liftoffs about falling white-colored insulation from the external fuel tank hitting the shuttle's windows, according to a 1983 NASA report. It said spray-on foam insulation flying off the external tank could cause significant damage to the shuttle's heat-resistant tiles.

Engineers developed at least two procedures -- shaving foam insulation and venting it with thousands of tiny pinpricks -- to reduce the amount of insulation flying off the external tank.

But NASA stated three years ago that "venting ... is only a temporary solution to the problem until a new type of foam can be formulated and applied."

The old foam is still being used.

...After Columbia's first flight in April 1981, NASA engineers said they would have had a difficult time clearing it for flight had they known in advance the insulation breakaways would produce such a debris shower.

-- AP story on USAToday

NASA's been working on this problem since before the first launch. Gee, it doesn't seem like a stark "environment vs. people" choice they made, does it?

You might want to consider your sources before you start assuming everything falls into the neat little cubbyholes your politics make you think of. Fox "News" has run a "special" claiming that the moon launches were all a big conspiracy; maybe that's not the best source for news about NASA. You think? (Meanwhile do we hear any liberals ranting about this all being Bush's fault? They seem to actually give a crap about the problem, rather than just vying to score faked-up political points.)

At first let me apologize. This is offtopic, but I have to say this.

Anyone heard of H.P. Lovecraft? The famous author who lived through late 1800 and early 1900 years. Anyone read his books? He has written _several_ books about a mysterious sea monster that lives deep in the ocean. A creature called CTHULHU.

What makes this story really interesting is this news story here.

Now those of you who have read H.P. Lovecraft's books about CTHULHU now doesn't this creature look a lot like one?? Seriously. I got chills when I heard about this news. This carcass is 12 meters long and it weights 13 000 kilograms and _NOBODY KNOWS_ what it is!!! Pretty scary thing!!! Those of you who have not read H.P.Lovecraft's books, get them and read them! They were written about 100 years ago, but he described with details this creature that was found on the shores of Chile!

• DNA profiles from juvenile offenders and from adults who have been arrested but not convicted would be added to the FBI's national DNA database under a Bush administration proposal.

• 1.) Arrested for any crime? Even non-violent crime?
• 2.) Would anybody who was arrested be required to submit a DNA sample or merely could his/her DNA sample be accepted for CODIS?

• The state and local backlog problem has two components:
• "casework sample backlogs," which consist of DNA samples obtained from crime scenes, victims, and suspects in criminal cases,
• and
• "convicted offender backlogs," which consist of DNA samples obtained from convicted offenders who are incarcerated or under supervision.

• The answer to the first question appears to be:
• A criminal case arises when the government seeks to punish an individual for an act that has been classified as a crime by Congress or a state legislature. Thus this would include collecting DNA from drunk drivers, etc., folks for whom there's really not a good investigative reason to collect their DNA, generally.
• Here's some information on DNA Forensics
  
  It may not pass right away here, but I'd be really surprised if it doesn't eventually. Already DNA samples are collected from suspects. However, AFAIK those samples (collected from suspects) *cannot* be kept in the national DNA DB b/c that DB is supposedly only convicted criminals.
  
  DNA collection is one of the encroachments on civil liberties that scares me the most because SO many people are so unaware of any potentially nefarious results from it (eugenics being the most tame) and simultaneously are so WOWED by how DNA evidence solves cases that they will willingly submit to this new rule WHEN said initiative hits stateside in earnest.
  

How often do you change your hardware, and how much do you do it? A quick search on Google pulled up articles like this one and this one. As you can see, initial experiences were so bad, Microsoft had to add in a bit of leeway for people. "In the event reactivation is needed, users will still have to dial a support line to receive a new code to restart Windows." Microsoft's own site even explains reactivation. "If the user completely overhauls the hardware making substantial hardware changes (even over long periods of time), reactivation may be required. In that case, users may need to contact to contact a Microsoft customer service representative by telephone to reactivate." Sounds like a hardware enthusiast to me.

Umm, sorry, yes! Photons DO have a mass. What you probably meant is that photons do not have a rest mass (which an academic statement of sorts, since photons can never be observed at rest). Everybody agrees that photons carry energy E=hf, and Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2 therefore gives photons a mass m=hf/c^2. Now one could argue that "yes, but it's not real mass... it's really energy...", but this would be completely beside the point. The proper way to interpret Einstein's equation is that mass and energy are one and the same thing! If it weren't for their mass, light would not be affected by gravitational forces, and gravitational lenses (which are routinely observed by astronomers) would not exist!

After this rant, I have to add a disclaimer though: A brief google taught me that by commonly accepted convention, the word mass always seems to imply rest mass. In this sense, the above poster is of course right. It boils down to bickering about words and definitions, which is usually best avoided :-)

because there are too many dumbasses screwing things up.

It's more like the "cool" mentality. People drive $60,000 luxury vehicles because they're ultra-well built, have all sorts of whiz-bang features, and not too many other folks have one. It's arguable that a $20,000 Honda may more dependable than a $40,000 Lincoln or whatever, but in general, people don't buy the Lincoln soley for transportation.

Ditto for $3000 computers. Someone came up with the parallel that Apple is the BMW of computers. This article takes that and runs with it. The 17" sells because of its wow factor. If you've got a client you're trying to impress, nothing works better than a 23" cinema display or a 17" TiBook.

It really doesn't matter if they shoehorned the display in or not, as long as it does its job, and the computer has the necessary cool factor.

I do realize how complicated the shuttle is. I also know that they are required to take the entire thing apart after it returns from space, requalify each piece, and rebuild the entire thing from the ground up. This makes it MORE expensive than just building a new one from scratch! The shuttle is about as reusable as a car that has to be rebuilt every night.

In December, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, hired for his budgetary prowess, unveiled yet another plan for a shuttle successor. The "orbital space plane" would cost roughly $12 billion to develop and build by 2010 and could get four to six astronauts to the space station at a fraction of the shuttle's cost.

NASA has taken $2.4 billion from its existing $15 billion annual budget to fund research and development of the space plane through 2007. Congress would have to authorize another $10 billion or so to on top of that to build the vehicle.

USA Today article on 2/4/2003

Still think it's a cool idea to build one from scratch each time?

Hey Bill, nice comb-over.

Now, here's what he's saying:

"WTF! Linux? OMG, Linux is so owned... noone ever got fired for buying MSFT. Oh yeah, and we're innovators too."

And just to prove it, there's a big banner ad running on top of the article for the eMode IQ test...

We here in some countries in Europe have very good laws already against SMS Spam.

Finally, all of Europe even has very good legislation against spam in general:
Directive 2002/58/EC, Article 13:
In a nutshell: Technology-neutral opt-in, with only a few, rather reasonable exceptions, but no gaping loopholes.
It's a new concept for Europe either. Now, if Americans have to suffer from spam for years whenever a new technology comes along, call your "congressperson" to explain why they don't make a law like this. Hint: Their answer (post it!) should not contain poor "red herring" excuses citing the "First Amendment" or the "Dormant Commerce Clause" if they count on being re-elected: The courts have already decided that it is perfectly constitutional to wham spam with a ban by federal law.

Granted _we_ all know the conclusion is obvious, but how many media exec's read Slashdot? We should thank the Frank Rich for the article and hope that it lights some idea bulbs in the massholes (marketing assholes) in the various "industry associatios". If to steal "content" (and I don't care for the word steal, as the cartels put it; they are really stealing from us) or to pay marks a consumer as "discriminating," then so be it. It's about time _someone_ gives _credit_ to "consumers" being "discriminating."

there's nothing wrong with copy-protected CDs - as long as they're clearly labeled as such.

A copy-protected 'CD' is a contradiction in terms.

Here's an article about it.

Ok, if you want to go into the consipiracy theory bit, then here we go... The FBI wouldn't use RFID because it's already deprecated technology. They would instead send in their Microsoft (ie, root of all evil) developed spy roaches equiped with the newest micro camera/audio recorder. These would communicate directly to the agents outside wearing their new invisibility cloaks watching the whole event (the roaches are just for hard evidence) with their X-ray glasses (the real ones, not those clunky things used in the airport).

And all this because a group of dissenters wants to cook up wild stories about black helicopters. What do you think?

Seriously, RFID as surveillance sucks. You still have to be within feet of the device. And anyone will be able to buy equipment to look for devices searching for a signal. Just not very practical for subterfuge. The gov't has much nicer toys.

Posting anonymous to keep my karma in tact...

USAToday has a story about the 'Cajun King of Spam', Ronnie Scelson. Mr. Scelson claims that he sends 60 to 70 million emails a day (or 2 billion a month) while claiming 'What I do is not illegal. It's the people who spam sex, Viagra and get-rich-quick schemes that give commercial e-mailers a bad name.' Apparently, he didn't hear what happend to Alan Ralsky when he began bragging about his 'success'.

Sorry I disagree. Note the careful wording: "killed in hostile action." This allows CNN to cut the total of all servicemen who have died in Iraq in half. From USA Today we see stats indicating that the number of combat deaths is sometimes less than the number of accidental deaths especially when the force is asymetric, which in this case it clearly is. ABC News has a more detailed list of casualties and how they happened (it appears to be out of date). Ask yourself, has Ryan Cox served his country any less for dying in a "noncombat weapon discharge?" Does his Mom feel any differently?

I can't find a link handy, but I read in the Boston Globe (on paper) that the actual death rate, including those not killed "in hostile action" is roughly one per day. I find it rather disgusting that CNN would minimise the sacrifice made by those who went and served honorably and gave everything for us, just because of some beaurocratic label.

Sorry I disagree. Note the careful wording: "killed in hostile action." This allows CNN to cut the total of all servicemen who have died in Iraq in half. From USA Today we see stats indicating that the number of combat deaths is sometimes less than the number of accidental deaths especially when the force is asymetric, which in this case it clearly is. ABC News has a more detailed list of casualties and how they happened (it appears to be out of date). Ask yourself, has Ryan Cox served his country any less for dying in a "noncombat weapon discharge?" Does his Mom feel any differently?

I can't find a link handy, but I read in the Boston Globe (on paper) that the actual death rate, including those not killed "in hostile action" is roughly one per day. I find it rather disgusting that CNN would minimise the sacrifice made by those who went and served honorably and gave everything for us, just because of some beaurocratic label.

This 2001 USA Today article indicated that 2.8 billion songs a month were cursing through Napster.

I would think 2.3b is probably quite conservative. I would suspect that the average P2P listener will download two to three thousand songs a year. It doesn't seem like a lot. But, collectively it is a sizeable chunk of the music market.

You should add to the physical downloads the amount of music that gets burned on CDs and distributed as gifts. I know students who don't have CD burners, but have collections of 300+ albums just given to them by friends or at parties. I really wouldn't be surprised if the underground music exchange market wasn't several times the size of the above ground market.

Yeah. Same thing with the Living with Dinosaurs thing (or what's it called):
The mighty T-rex goes hunting. It walks trough the forest until it spots a flock of small fast-running animals. It opens its mouth, raises its head and ROAARRRSSS!!!! its lungs out, before jumping between the edible animals.
No wonder T-rex was often a scavenger.

Ang Lee, director of Hulk, was not going to put the main character in purple shorts until he encountered pressure from fans online. The fans threatened to badmouth and boycott the movie if Lee didn't stick to the comic in that regard, so he switched the outfit back.

There is actually a reason everyone qualifies their legal expertise. That is because it is actually illegal to give legal advice unless you are a member of the bar, and people get prosecuted for it all the time.

If it's illegal then non-lawyers should not be giving legal advice even with the disclaimer "IANAL". However, consider this case:

One prominent area of the site advertises "Free Legal Advice." That portion of the site states in the preamble: "We are all led to believe that whenever we are faced with some legal matter that we automatically are required to employ an attorney. There are many matters of a legal nature that we can and should resolve on our own without incurring unnecessary expenses of an attorney. Although I am not an attorney, I can assure you that it is not necessary to be a lawyer in order to provide some guidance and/or advice on how to deal with your legal problems."

He was giving legal advice while admitting to not being a lawyer. He was accused of practising the law without a license. The judgement from the Board ruled in his favour.

Thus, according to the Board, "the publication of legal advice on Palmer's web-site, good or bad, is not of itself the unauthorized practice of the law."

So at the very least in this specific case in this particular jurisdiction it was fine to offer legal advice without a license. The Board would have ruled differently if he had crossed the line and started to practise the law.

Still, it was "troubling" to the Board that Palmer offered to respond to "any questions about your rights" and to "provide you with guidance and/or advice." The Board concluded that "if Palmer actually gave legal advice in specific response to a question from one of his readers, he would have engaged in the unauthorized practice of the law."

But fortunately nobody on Slashdot ever gives specific responses because the questions lack any specific details.

Either way, the IANAL is redundant. Either it is legal to give advice in which case you don't need the IANAL. Or it is illegal to give advice no matter how many disclaimers you insert.

Here is an article from March: Ford to sell hybrid Escape SUV at a loss

"We have to subsidize the price of the hybrid technology," said Prabhakar Patil, chief program engineer for the hybrid Escape, set to go on sale late this year. "We feel it's important to get in the market for this technology and get feedback from customers."

The first hybrid Escapes will be sold to fleet customers, while a version for retail buyers won't be available until the middle of next year.

Who from Enron did Bush appoint to his cabinet? I was not aware he appointed anyone from Enron to his cabinet, and I am not aware of the Bush Administration influencing anything w/regards the Enron case.

Thomas White, Secretary of the Army, is a former Enron executive. However "Kenny Boy" had a lot more influence than just that.

Clinton gave pardons to some pretty shady individuals. Do you take issue with Clinton for that? I hope so, otherwise you are a hypocrite.

Yes, I'd much rather that Clinton only pardoned people who weren't convicted criminals! Maybe he could have pardoned little girls and cute puppy dogs instead. ( I think we have new 2003 nomination for "Unclear on the Concept". )

don't get me wrong, sexual hypocrisy is a problem in the world, especially in the us.

but everyone can support a legal measure that insists on a hands-off attitude towards children and sexual overtures from adults... from sexual conservatives like john ashcroft, who has to cover up naked breasts on statues behind him on stage (snicker), to righteous liberal sex-advice columnists, like dan savage. nobody likes pedophilia, period. no slippery slope here folks.

now, since spammers spew indiscriminantly, they have no way of knowing if the account they are sending to is owned by a child. meanwhile, responsible email mass-mailers have means of knowing who their audience is and can easily avoid this pitfall.

result? a legal weapon against spam everyone can get behind. it can be mercilessly enforced, with moral and righteous indignation. no grey areas, no controversy. pedophilia is evil, period. jail time anyone?

this is an excellent development. bravo symantec.

This would not be the first time that Caltech has taken an innovation and turned it into a big time money maker. DNA Sequencing made a lot of money for Caltech, though not without some controversies.

Just google for "grade inflation" and read a couple of the articles. For your convenience I've listed a couple of articles that I found off the top. There's pretty strong social pressure on professors to "give" the students the grades even though the students may not have earned them. And that lottery money being used for merit based scholarships? A waste of effort. Taxpayers would do better to simply allocate funds to the schools instead of giving it to the kids as a scholarship.

• Grade Inflation: The current fraud
• Fiscal Policy Effects on Grade Inflation
• A call for an end to grade inflation
• HOPE Scholarships Transform the University of Georgia
• Grade inflation becoming problem at Vanderbilt
• Students studying less, receiving higher grades

But you can never say that violent video games have no effect or no influence whatsoever on the individuals that play them. Neither does, as your post seem to imply (though I know that's not what you meant), poor parenting breed violence.

Good parenting can minimize the violence, but poor parenting doesn't necessarily cause violence. Neither can you say with 100% certainty that violent games do not cause violent behavior - it depends on too many different factors - but violent games by themselves cannot be proven to definitely cause violent behavior.

So basically, you're saying that since we can never definitively prove what causes violence in human beings, then violent video games count as one of those causes. Under that logic, PEANUT BUTTER is also one of the contributing factors in human violence, simply because I cannot prove that it does or doesn't. In fact, if I had replaced "violent video games" with "PEANUT BUTTER" in your post, it would've made as much sense.

This kind of post is an excellent example of why this debate lasts. People are convinced that violent video games cause violence simply because of mix of "common sense" and constant assertions by the scaremongering media that it is true. They have a general feeling that something is true, so they grasp at absolutely anything that will verify that feeling, even if it makes no sense whatsoever. They don't have statistics because violence among minors and violence as a whole in the United States (where Grand Theft Auto 3 has sold seven million copies, at least since last September) has been falling and they don't even have anecdotes because the only school shooting that was seriously linked to video games was Columbine, which also had two kids with detached, moronic parents and other kids beating them up regularly and throwing bottles at them out of moving cars. With nothing else to grasp, they just make arguments like this one, which basically amount to "ummm... because."

I suspect that most of the people who might use tablets are already happy with their laptops. If my own laptop hadn't been stolen, I'd be looking at the tablets and shrugging. And I won't get one until I have a job again.

The big hope for tablets is vertical applications, like doctors carrying them instead of paper charts. Except people aren't investing a lot in new technology right now.

• (1) Own a major media corp.
• (2) Go over the FCC imposed cap, again.
• (3) Petition FCC to increase the cap to fit your percentages.
• (4) Profit!!
• (5) Go to (2)

Better yet, ask Halliburton, which has done huge business in direct opposition to the US national interest with many foreign countries including two of the three members of the Axis of Evil and Libya. The U.S. Gov't has fined Halliburton several million dollars for doing business with terrorist states, but then gave it a $7 billion contract to put out oil well fires. When there weren't any oil well fires to speak of, the U.S. Gov't told Halliburton to keep the money, we'd find other things for them to do.

The moral is that with the right connections, you can upset the US national interests all you want and the government will just bend over further and ask for a kiss.

As for foreign countries, the US indicted 14 members of Hizb'allah for the Khobar Towers bombing in 2001, which killed 19 US airmen. The suspects were in Saudi Arabia at the time and Saudi Arabia has refused to extradite them to the US to stand trial. We're not kicking their ass either. Instead, we're doing exactly what Osama bin Laden has wanted us to do for the last 12 years: taking our troops out of SA.

Pakistan sold gas centrifuges to North Korea to help its nuclear weapons program and is providing safe haven for the Taliban on the Afghan border. We're not kicking their ass either.

Seems to me that we just invaded Iraq to distract everyone from the sight of GWB bending over adn greasing up for the real terrorists.

For the last six years the averaged revenue growth is 7.2 - 9.8% (except for the year 2000 probably due to the recession). That's pretty good figures. For the years 1980-1995, before high speed Internet, the average revenue growth was 5.2% a year.

2. The data you are showing is relative to ticket sales in theaters, where DeCSS is a non-issue. DeCSS affects the sale of VHS and DVD products by diluting the market for those goods with "pirate" copies that are either free or cheap.

You are right here. The increase in DVD sales is much more impressive than the revenue growth of the ticket sales.

DVDs conquer the movie world

WARNER-HOME-VIDEO-DVD Sales Soar

BusinessWeek

Blockbuster Sees Revenue, Profit Growth in Q1

4. Just using the numbers you linked to, the movie makers are actually losing more money than ever. So I suggest not using these numbers in any rational debate about the subject at hand.

The Domestic Grosses are just part of moviemakers revenue. There are also Overseas Grosses, which excide the domestic grosses. There are also rental revenue, merchandise sells, and VHS and DVD sells.

Warner's 4Q revenue rose to $11.4 billion from $10.6 billion, as strong box office and DVD sales and improvingCNN Money

Fox Post Profit Gains

The Ever-Expanding, Profit-Maximizing, Cultural-Imperialist, Wonderful World of Disney

I would be wary of buying one simply because the future of the service is in jeopardy.

That is some horrible information there. I am not worried about my ReplayTV service that has not had a single problem since my purchase last year. If you haven't heard/read, ReplayTV was purchased by a good company, D&M.

Here's an article

Maybe you should reconsider giving out advice.

Anyway, yeah, it'd be cool to have some kind of software solution to all this (preferably Free software), but as it is, it just doesn't seem feasible, mostly because TiVO hardware is cheap and a large part of what you're paying for is the guide service, anyway.

These are mentioned everytime a TiVo/ReplayTV article is published, do a Google search for MythTV or SageTV

Friends, ever heard of hand-eye coordination? It's just another way of saying "visual skills." Hand-eye coordination was first hyped in the 80s as a benefit of videogaming. Here is a USA Today article that makes mention of that "benefit." (BTW, I'm putting the word in quotation marks because I'm wondering how important it is to have good visual skills/hand-eye coordination. Does that benefit truly outweigh all the damn time we hard-core gamers waste?)

Are you guys familiar with In-Q-Tel? (It's mentioned in the article)

Here's an article.
and another...
and another...
and another...

However, according to the estimates in USA Today, The Matrix: Reloaded dropped 50% in sales from opening weekend to this past weekend. Granted, that's an estimate, but that's still one big drop. I'd be willing to bet that a significant factor for that drop is the pirating of the movie.

However, according to the estimates in USA Today, The Matrix: Reloaded dropped 50% in sales from opening weekend to this past weekend. Granted, that's an estimate, but that's still one big drop. I'd be willing to bet that a significant factor for that drop is the pirating of the movie.

Hmmm. I wonder if the industry's sudden interest in BitTorrent has anything to do with Matrix Reloaded not making as much as the studios hoped.
Not to be overly cynical or anything, but I imagine that some of the studio flacks who promised their bosses that this was the next Spider Man are sweating through their Hugo Boss. But luckily, they've got a perfect way to deflect criticism; blame the Internet bogeyman that's destroying copyrights! Yeah, we didn't overhype this movie to the world (and, more importantly, our investors)! It was, uh, (checks list of P2P networks) BitTorrent!

But you can't keep the borrowed energy, so you could never jump to the top of a roof, even if it were no taller than the wall you just jumped over.

Well, most of the time you can't keep the energy. Hawking Radiation is, however, a case where one of the particles does get to keep the borrowed energy.

Hawking Radiation is covered will in this USA today article.

The right stuff and can-do attitude of the early days has been replaced by bureaucrats. Which, as you seen, can cost people their lives. As you can see here, shuttle rescues used to be part of the nasa planning process.

Of courser there is this question as well

• The part they and other safety experts were most concerned about is a rushed launch of Atlantis, especially given the fact that it would have to fly with the known problem that foam debris from the external tank dealt a severe blow to Columbia's heat shield.

  "What's to stop you from having the same damage to Atlantis? You're basically throwing the dice," Thagard said.

The museum looting story seems to have been overblown. During much of the looting of the museum, US forces were under fire from inside the museum and could not have prevented the looting without damaging the museum itself.

What about hospitals? What about classrooms? What about restoring power and water supplies?

You think that kind of infrastructure just gets restored overnight? Shit, we had a squirrel zap one of our transformers yesterday. The circuit has 100 families on it. It took the local power company 6 hours to get our power turned back on. Multiply that by a whole country...

And for the record, Iraq has a lower adult literacy rate (58%) than neighbors Jordan (89%) and Syria (65%). Primary education in Iraq has consisted mostly of lessons on the greatness of Saddam Hussein. And also for the record, much of Iraq's long tradition of "civilization" has consisted of conquering and looting its neighbors.

How is Afghanistan doing these days?

Afghanistan is probably better off today than at any time since the start of the Soviet invasion.

I've heard that the US senate seat for NJ costs $65 million. It helps if it's mostly your own money though...

That may seem like a lot, but I think it's a great bargain.

You'd control 1/100th of 1/2 of 1/3 of the entire federal government: or 0.167%. (1 seat of 100 Senators; Legislative branch divided into two houses; FederalGov=Executive+Legislative+Judicial)

The GDP of the US is about $10 trillion, so 0.167% of that is: $16.7 billion. Almost 260 times the investment! The return is even greater considering that Senators don't have to worry about re-elections for six years.

They weren't kidding: Corzine really IS a successful businessman!

Microsoft is so embarrassed about their iLoo proposal, they have tried to claim it was all a hoax. However, ABCNews says the iLoo was real but has been killed. Microsoft can't even keep their story straight on something as ridiculous as building a computer system into a public toilet!

What is the world coming to?

Why don't you send a letter to Alan Ralsky, one of the largest spammers around, and ask him this question.

Or better yet, order him a pizza and a few cabs.

The stupid moron was dumb enough to use his home address to register his business.

I'm gonna drive over there right now and take picures of the next 24 hours.

Cheetos,

Darren