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The 2011 deficit was $1.299T. The 2011 military budget was unauditable it was so literally out of control, but nearly $1.3T even using the government's (surely undercounting) numbers. Of course cutting the military isn't the only cut, but if it were cut to $400B that would require raising taxes only $400B to balance the budget.

Just making capital gains for people collecting over $250K income the same rate as regular income would raise over $200B of that. A 0.1% financial transaction tax would raise over $100B more. Ensuring that people earning over $1M paid at least 30% taxes, regardless of deductions and loopholes, gets another $35B a year under the Buffett Rule. The remaining $50B or so can be raised by closing loopholes like the scam of borrowing against shares, never selling them until your heirs do when you die. Making "carried interest" by stock traders taxable as income instead of capital gains is another $18B.

That's not many tax changes. They're all already in Congress, including in Obama's budget sent there today, except the financial transaction tax is only proposed at a piddling 0.03%. You can argue about whether any or all of them are worth doing. But it's perfectly clear that cutting defense and raising taxes can produce enough money to balance the budget, and indeed to pay down the debt until the interest no longer generates its own sizeable deficit demanding more debt.

I feel like the image titled 'pale blue dot' does a better job of illustrating just how... small we are in the grand scheme of things.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue_Dot.png

Do a search on youtube for 'Pale Blue Dot' by carl sagan if you want to be humbled.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Earth's_Location_in_the_Universe_SMALLER_(JPEG).jpg/1920px-Earth's_Location_in_the_Universe_SMALLER_(JPEG).jpg

The edge of the observable universe is 47,000,000,000 light years away.
Where is your god now?

I presume that if Wikipedia moves its domain name registrations, it is probably also doing some due diligence to assure itself that any company it does work with can provide both the level of service and also has policies that are roughly in line with its views.

I'm not sure what the technical difficulty is, because GoDaddy only appears to provide its domain name registrations, not provide the Wikimedia servers themselves, which appear to be in colocation facilities. Maybe someone can explain if there are any such issues??

Maybe Wikipedia could establish its own domain name registrar? The fixed cost seems to be only about $4000.....

Long live arbitrary selections of events to support your theories...

The British Empire -- 500 years.

It's quite frightening how straightforward (here: old, CFC-based foam piece killed Columbia*) the facts can be, and still not work with those people... but then, myths and their collections seem to also have a much stronger grasp on them, on average.

Here, I guess also the myths of glorious-looking (kinda feels like this damn French Concorde, but better / in space!) Flash Gordon style contraptions of a spacecraft which wastes most of its LEO mass on airframe ...possibly even with its designers and decision-makers being raised on & influenced by such works of fiction (FG and so on; which mostly just naively extrapolated rapid advances in airplane tech of the ~1940s; kinda like those airplanes (Wiki Unicode URL, tends to work weird on /.) from "our" times, as imagined ~130 years ago, were undoubtedly shaped by rapid advances in marine tech - and we can even build them, basically just take a Harrier & remove wings and canopy ...it's still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality).

The STS was simply deeply flawed, foam-shedding (another fact: most severe - but lucky to spare critical impact points - in early flights, which used only CFC-based foams) being just one aspect of it ...not even the worst (other being also with the basic concept, its premises and promises - obsolete even before the Shuttle seriously got onto drawing boards, for example with automatic rendezvous & docking done since the 60s)
Oh yeah, but it looked and felt awesome, I'd be the first to give it that (hm, yeah, "emotional" as you say)

And with the news at hand... "green" fuels are also simply much easier & safer to work with; those are things which - contrary to the suggestion of (great?)grandparent poster - tend to save time and money in the longish & up time spans (so, for once aiming at thoughtful long-term choices)

*Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, Volume 2, Appendix D, Section 11.3 and figure 11-1, p222

So about 7.5 hours of useful energy, and a couple more hours of producing below 25% of capacity.

Sure, it *runs* more than 5-6 hours, but not at full nameplate capacity (unless you live very near the equator).

See this graph to get an idea of the annualized daily irradiation in the US (and divide the numbers by 24 hours to get a corresponding capacity factor).

The bigger problem, actually, is weather. Today I produced 21kWh. Yesterday, I produced 4.

That's only a problem if you're not connected to the power grid.

Theses aren't features that will benefit much from screenshots.
Like the "Windows on the Go": Look at your screen. Now look at the flash drive in your USB port. That's what Windows on the Go looks like.
Linux's LiveUSB: Look at a screenshot of a Linux deskop. Now look at that same flash drive.

My own oxymoronic description of Steve Jobs is that he was an empathic sociopath. He was very empathic towards his customers--at least on the front of providing a cohesive, friendly product and product experience and working tirelessly to get there--but rather sociopathic toward the people nearest him. Throw in his famous charisma and tada! Steve Jobs.

The empathy itself is a faux empathy, though, so it perhaps isn't such the contradiction that it seems. I think Steve keenly understood the Paradox of Choice, and had no problem making all the choices for his customers. He lucked out having a great sense of taste coming from his sense of minimalism.

What's with people here. You were wrong. Totally and dead wrong, but instead of admitting it and moving, on you start nitpicking replays and are a total ass about it. I've ridden on C-17s and ran my laptop off the power, but still it took me a whole fucking 5 seconds to find this. Are you too stupid to use Google? Or just like being an asshole?

Add one more to the India's glorious list of scams https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India_(state_wise)

So in Star Trek miracle land, a KW or two is quite possible off a typical roof. Of course in Star Trek miracle land, you'd have 47% efficient cells thus generating about 40 KW.

We are very close to Star Trek miracle land, then, since the highest efficiency to date is 43.5%:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/PVeff(rev111103).jpg

In other words, all it takes is a nuclear bomb?

No. An EPFCG is cheaper, smaller, and more easily acquired/assembled by a non-government entity than a nuke. There are a few more similar EMP-generation technologies, but EPFCGs produce more RF energy than any other single non-nuclear device; see: Pulsed power.

In other words, all it takes is a nuclear bomb?

No. An EPFCG is cheaper, smaller, and more easily acquired/assembled by a non-government entity than a nuke. There are a few more similar EMP-generation technologies, but EPFCGs produce more RF energy than any other single non-nuclear device; see: Pulsed power.

I don't agree that there is a "correct" American English accent. My intent is only to show that a "standard" accent seems to exist:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/General_American

As a public health measure, we specifically designed our scanners to operate 95% on faith beams and only 5% on ionizing radiation(the fact that this also allowed the sleazy contractor not-at-all-definitely-not connected to our former leader, who definitely isn't a lich save on BOM costs was unconnected with this decision...)

If you allow skeptics to get near the machines, they'll jam the faith rays and force us to either face further terrorist attacks or turn up the radiation!

For most of my life, I've been getting increasingly resentful of these corporate pirates for stealing, hoarding, and even sometimes destroying human culture. They have no interest whatsoever in the "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," nor will they ever be satisfied with any "limited Time" regulating their monopolistic control over thoughts.

Now, these assholes have already shown... They cannot be trusted.

With the exception of some governments, NGOs, and a minority of intelligent artists, the public domain, as defined by law, is a thing of the past. My response to this government and corporations mutual disregard for the founders' more than generous monopoly terms, is to disregard those terms myself, with the maximum effect I can bring to bear. No useless letters to government prostitutes involved.

My uTorrent stats show 964GB transferred in the past ten days, and a 1:12.8 dl:ul ratio since install. I put as much as I can on properly stored archival DVDs, but I'm one person with limited resources. One advantage that we "little people" have over libraries and funded preservation/conservation efforts is not having to wait past death to make a copy; I have a copy a minute after an RSS feed update, and at least ten more public copies before I'm done with it. Hopefully some of my peers are doing the same. You know, I find it tragicomical how these industrial copy-Nazis and their apologists get so confused about who's greedy, freeloading, cheap, thieving, and who's really "entitled."

That all said, I'm not certain what I'm actually achieving in the end, but I do know that I'm motivated to try to improve things for maximum people, and the MAFIAA pirates' motive is amassing more corporate welfare; i.e., "transfer of wealth" at everyone else expense.

For most of my life, I've been getting increasingly resentful of these corporate pirates for stealing, hoarding, and even sometimes destroying human culture. They have no interest whatsoever in the "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," nor will they ever be satisfied with any "limited Time" regulating their monopolistic control over thoughts.

Now, these assholes have already shown... They cannot be trusted.

With the exception of some governments, NGOs, and a minority of intelligent artists, the public domain, as defined by law, is a thing of the past. My response to this government and corporations mutual disregard for the founders' more than generous monopoly terms, is to disregard those terms myself, with the maximum effect I can bring to bear. No useless letters to government prostitutes involved.

My uTorrent stats show 964GB transferred in the past ten days, and a 1:12.8 dl:ul ratio since install. I put as much as I can on properly stored archival DVDs, but I'm one person with limited resources. One advantage that we "little people" have over libraries and funded preservation/conservation efforts is not having to wait past death to make a copy; I have a copy a minute after an RSS feed update, and at least ten more public copies before I'm done with it. Hopefully some of my peers are doing the same. You know, I find it tragicomical how these industrial copy-Nazis and their apologists get so confused about who's greedy, freeloading, cheap, thieving, and who's really "entitled."

That all said, I'm not certain what I'm actually achieving in the end, but I do know that I'm motivated to try to improve things for maximum people, and the MAFIAA pirates' motive is amassing more corporate welfare; i.e., "transfer of wealth" at everyone else expense.

"'Medieval warming period' was NOT evidence of pre-industrial climate change."

Strange. Never heard that. To me it looks like a climate change. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Still, the sharp rise the last century is not similar to the rise of the MWP.

"Oh, yea. I forgot that AGW is a religion."

I relegate religions to the religious.

AGW is testable and refutable and therefore has some true meaning, as part of science.

Religions have no virtues.

Nuclear submarine reactors aren't cooled with seawater.

Power plants aren't either, not directly. There's a heat exchanger in-between. The actual reactor coolant has to be ultra-pure not only to reduce corrosion, but to avoid buildup of isotopes that would develop from the impurities and form deposits in the pipes at locations that would increase exposure to plant workers. Of course buildup is also a problem for things like pumps and valves.

One of the very disturbing things found in Japan when other reactors got a closer look was a plant where a significant amount of seawater did get into the reactor coolant. It's shocking that such a thing had previously been undetected and has serious safety implications as it points to hidden corrosion or other damage. If a heat exchanger was rusted through or something they should have known about the corrosion long before it caused leakage of tons of water.

As for sodium in solution being quick to absorb and transport dangerous material, other questions come to mind. How severe are the implications for underground waste storage in ancient salt beds/caves? With global climate change can we count on those places remaining dry for 10,000 years???

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tempest_attack

It's a little disconcerting that so many of these "nothing to see here citizen, move along" posts are made by anonymous cowards.

Well maybe some think they're protecting you from the negative health effects of anxiety (even if what brings it on is all or partly true), or trying to mitigate the economic / environmental consequences that opting to use more fossil fuel brings.

My take is that we all should know the whole story, and make fully informed choices. Democracy can't function properly if people aren't well educated and informed.
If what turns out to be a better path turns out to have a downside too (isn't there always one?) we should be able to accept that. If there isn't full transparency more doubt is planted, as that setting is also the cloak that masks greed and corruption.

A problem with using "background" as a reference is that it gives the illusion that those levels are natural and harmless when generally neither is true. The "background" in many areas of the U.S. was left higher than it would have otherwise would have been by the era of above ground testing. Half the levels are seen in places like Australia. It's an odd coincidence that some the parts of the U.S. said to have the highest background from "altitude" also happen to include the regions that historically had the greatest mining for offending materials. (see the government publication from 1951 "Prospecting for Uranium". The average individual risks of health consequences from our elevated background are generally small, but out of a large population the added disease and death is certainly real. There's reason to care, but not reason to panic. While there is dispersion after large releases, air and rain patterns can lead to localized hotspots even at great distance and some of the materials are a long term problem. That means the impact from exposure may differ greatly with location to a degree few are informed enough to expect.

Maybe some of the uncomfortable truths can be used positively. If people in areas with high radon in the water levels in the water knew that their greatest exposure was from what they inhale while taking a shower, they might actually take shorter showers cutting fossil fuel use. If fracking or other operations increase what's in the water, people should know to reduce exposure through usage patterns and to make sure that any added treatment needed is implemented.

Transparency and understanding is needed to foster making the best choices both in terms of consumption and what/how-much we consume. It's not hard to see how wrong things could go if we blinded ourselves (or others do it for us) to the full story. Striking the best balance between current economic/lifestyle and long term concerns isn't easy. We need to stay level-headed and be using our heads.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gasbuggy

Well, you can't hide in a western country with American fingers in it, obviously.

Anything in grey on this map doesn't (or didn't - I'd imagine Slovenia has one now, being EU member, for example) have a treaty. Of course that doesn't preclude uh... let's say 'extrajudicial extradition' from happening. map

If you want examples of mostly black & white photographs with a touch of color, then you need to go back to the 19th century:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dubbelportr%C3%A4tt,_Sven_Alarik_Bergstr%C3%B6m_och_hans_hustru_Flore_Jos%C3%A9phine_Constance,_f._Pontus_-_Nordiska_Museet_-_NMA.0052773_1.jpg

Your phone can probably beat a grandmaster at chess. No, really. That article says it played a tournament with a performance rating of 2898 which is comparable to the best human players in the world. The original computer was huge, but it turned out that all the techniques they developed scale down to normal computers surprisingly well.

Watson (the Jeopardy computer) on the other hand is a fair amount larger than a car (10 racks if I reading that article right).

Following a set of logical rules is not how modern AI systems work (as I understand chess playing programs, it's pretty accurate... but that's a poor description of what Watson appears to be doing). Thinking about computer systems like the Google autonomous car as making logicial choices and following them is gross misunderstanding of modern machine learning and robotics. Autonomous cars will be flexible to different situations because they will be driven enough to have seen every weird situation a /.er can think up and the engineers will make sure the models the cars are using make the right choices in those situations.

Also, knowing the speed limit is pretty easy: my GPS device without an internet connection does it without being able to see any signs. Of course, it doesn't know about special conditions like construction or weather. More importantly, as a human driver, generally road conditions give rather strong hints to a reasonable speed without any need for looking at speed limit signs.

Your phone can probably beat a grandmaster at chess. No, really. That article says it played a tournament with a performance rating of 2898 which is comparable to the best human players in the world. The original computer was huge, but it turned out that all the techniques they developed scale down to normal computers surprisingly well.

Watson (the Jeopardy computer) on the other hand is a fair amount larger than a car (10 racks if I reading that article right).

Following a set of logical rules is not how modern AI systems work (as I understand chess playing programs, it's pretty accurate... but that's a poor description of what Watson appears to be doing). Thinking about computer systems like the Google autonomous car as making logicial choices and following them is gross misunderstanding of modern machine learning and robotics. Autonomous cars will be flexible to different situations because they will be driven enough to have seen every weird situation a /.er can think up and the engineers will make sure the models the cars are using make the right choices in those situations.

Also, knowing the speed limit is pretty easy: my GPS device without an internet connection does it without being able to see any signs. Of course, it doesn't know about special conditions like construction or weather. More importantly, as a human driver, generally road conditions give rather strong hints to a reasonable speed without any need for looking at speed limit signs.

Indeed, I hear that the crossing between Vermont and Quebec is particularly long and treacherous!

Uses outside educational purposes include use of a photo in a freeware video game or use of a photo for commercial purposes. Use outside the United States includes use in Great Britain, use in Germany, etc. Many of the Wikipedias in other languages ban all non-free images in part because they serve countries without strong protections for fair use.

I'd like to discuss this further with you, if you'd care to provide specific examples

Wikimedia Commons' guideline about derivative works mentions the toy example (search the page for "Pooh") among others. For the sculpture example, see Wikipedia's article about the Eiffel Tower.

What fucked WinCE was MSFT trying to make it act like Windows, full stop. Look at WinCE 5.0 and what instantly comes to mind...its a fricking hybrid of Win2K and WinXP, which is precisely the WRONG message you want to give on a device that don't run x86. A local retailer over the holiday thought he was gonna make some extra scratch selling "Windows tablets" with WinCE, hell the way the box was laid out it looked enough like XP if I didn't know what WinCE was i wouldn't have known. The customers didn't know either as they didn't know WTF WinCE was and i'm sure looked at the picture and thought it was just another version of XP. Well the guy ended up having to cover the Windows part and sell them at a loss as generic tablets thanks to all the returns he got.

What Apple and Google got right that MSFT STILL hasn't got right is you can't run the desktop on something you poke with a finger, it just don't work. You'd have thought WinCE would have goten that through their heads but instead we're getting the desktop fucked so Ballmer can try to hoodwink enough developers to get some apps for WinTab. if any developers fall for this let me be the first to give you a Nelson HA HA because that shit is gonna cause confusion just like the WinCE WinTab and its gonna bomb. you need to keep mobile and desktop separate, not jam all that shit together.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DO-178B

For Wikipedia: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/

For Office, there's Sironta. Server-less P2P collaboration that works on the three major OSs. It's AGPLv3 licensed.

The drastically oversimplified correlation was that the 1C "slight rise" in temperature was perfectly aligned with the modern industrial era: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png [wikimedia.org]

It's also perfectly aligned with the building of the Panama Canal and population decline of the bald eagle.

And if you think "minor" changes like that can't have drastic effects on ecosystems you obviously have not read enough research on the topic to make your opinion count for anything.

Don't have to. I can look outside. See, this last summer in my little neck f the woods was one of the hottest, driest and longest in recorded history. It was SEVERAL degrees hotter, on average, than just about any other time since records have been taken. The year before that was pretty brutal too. You know what happened? Nothing. Sure, our lawns turned brown and there were some big-ass forest fires (see Bastrop TX), but for the most part, everything is still here. No "drastic effects on ecosystems". We still have birds, bugs and stray cats. So, I really don't care "THOUSANDS OF CLIMATE RESEARCHERS" say when the real world tells me otherwise.

Granted, I'm well aware that thousands of years of this weather can start to change things. Take the Sahara as an example. It used to be a green, lush paradise. Now, it's a friggin' big, hot, unforgiving desert. But it took thousands and thousands of years to become a big friggin' desert and it happened all on its own, before fire was ever invented and the first smoke stack was ever built. And if climatologist were around back then, I'm sure they would proudly point out the climate change was perfectly aligned with the modern cave painting era, and if we don't stop using mastodon blood as the color red, the world is going to end.

I'm not worried about misspellings as much as the fact your entire post is a giant straw-man. Special native American dance? Really?

The drastically oversimplified correlation was that the 1C "slight rise" in temperature was perfectly aligned with the modern industrial era: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png Causation? Not by itself. But there are plenty of other research in that area as well.

And if you think "minor" changes like that can't have drastic effects on ecosystems you obviously have not read enough research on the topic to make your opinion count for anything. Same with your opinion on whether the THOUSANDS OF CLIMATE RESEARCHERS may have actually thought to consider natural causes before doing YEARS OF RESEARCH and coming to the firm conclusion that it's due to man-made causes.

There's a reason why they put free speech in the first amendment.

actually it was originally the third. the first two were something about allotting Representatives (technically outstanding, but completely irrelevant now) and the one about congress not being able to vote themselves an instant pay raise (finally ratified in 1992 as the 27th). go read it for yourself: here's the original version.

I think most of former Yugoslavia (probably not Slovenia. as it is EU member now), as well as a lot of ex-USSR states as well (Belarus, Ukraine, bits in the Caucasus, *istan - basically everything except the baltics), aren't on that list.

Hey, looks like that's probably right. map.

As a Brazilian, I'm disgusted at how some (maybe most) Americans value and money property over life.

You may be misunderstanding the situation to a degree, so I will expand on it a bit.

Let's use a real-life example. A friend of mine was robbed while walking home from a party at about 2:00AM in my city. Four men jumped out of a car and held him at gunpoint. (Heading this argument off at the pass, but it just as easily could have been knives or improvised weapons such as pipes or baseball bats.) They took his wallet and his cell phone.

Usually you'll be told to "just cooperate". You'll lose some money, maybe, but you'll be alive so long as you don't resist.

Except my very good friend followed this advice exactly. He gave the thieves his money and phone, and they shot him in the leg for fun.

What if they had killed him? What's to stop them? You have to understand that someone who is willing to break many laws (robbery, armed robbery, assault, etc.) would just as likely have no problem killing you if you felt like it. This is why all humans have a fundamental right to defend themselves. (Whether or not your government supports it is another thing.)

The threat of violence acts as a deterrent when it comes to persons wishing to steal, cause harm, and/or invade your home. I think it would be overkill to just kill someone because they broke into your home (unless you are so in fear for your life that you cannot think straight), but I have absolutely zero problem harming somebody or killing them in order to defend my home and my property.

You also forget that sometimes home invasion has nothing to do with robbery. What if someone is invading your home but they don't want to rob you?

Britain, for example, is rife with examples of people being jailed for defending themselves. There's Munir Hussain who was jailed for beating home invaders with a Cricket Bat. They were not there to rob them but rather to injure or kill Mr. Hussain and his family because they are Muslim. Granted, he chased a man down and beat him, but I would honestly do the same if someone had threatened my family or friends with harm or death.

So it's not about going Rambo on somebody and shooting them as soon as they step into your doorway - it's about using reasonable force. The problem is that if someone is in your house to rape your daughter/wife/etc., or they're crazy, or they're out to kill you, etc. the only reasonable response is lethal force. Kill or be killed. The other problem is that you can't really know what an intruder's intent is. The reasonable thing to do in my opinion is announce that you're armed and try to hold them for the police. If they run, let them go (depending on the situation). If they come at you, then kill them.

In addition, I really don't get how a mostly Christian country likes death penalty and wars so much.

Despite my strong stance on self defense, I am very serious about preservation of life. I think the death penalty can never work right - there is always a chance an innocent person can be convicted. It troubles me greatly that we as a country have yet to entirely abolish it. Thankfully, it seems to be disappearing by and large - one of the (few) points of pride about my state is that we haven't executed anyone since 1963.

"Mostly Christian" doesn't count for shit when it comes to violence as I'll explain below.

"Thou shalt not kill." doesn't have exceptions I know of.

Sure it does.

Romans 1:32 - Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but hav

Why would you use the Google cache when you can just follow Wikimedia's own instructions on how to get past the blockade?

Actually editing is blocked:
From the faq:

How is the blackout implemented?

        The read access blackout is implemented by means of a CentralNotice "banner" which overlays the entire page after being loaded (it does not have a clickthrough back to the page). Some whitelisted pages are exempted.
                The JavaScript code for the CentralNotice implementation can be seen here and can be previewed here. Messaging and functionality is subject to change.
        The write access blackout is implemented by means of setting $wgGroupPermissions to the edit right for all users to false. This means all users will get a permission denied error after attempting to edit.

Or just download the database dumps and a copy of MediaWiki/PHP/Apache/MySQL/anything else I missed to put it in.

I believe Indian courts are trying to indirectly impose/promote Forward caste hegemony over BC/SC/ST/Minority communities.

I believe Indian courts are trying to indirectly impose/promote Forward caste hegemony over BC/SC/ST/Minority communities.

The article [...] [is] about a homeless person succeeding due to their own will. This means that they have been empowered out of homelessness.

Intel didn't pay her, causing her to be able to afford housing. She won the "Associated Press human-interest newswire lottery," causing a disproportionate amount of donations (a manifestation of compassion to be sent her way. Suppose it hadn't been a slow news day... What of the Samantha Garveys that aren't placed right in front of your face? I suppose for you, it's not your problem... Those slow-news-day Samanthas and their families (of which I assure you, there are many...) are probably just lazy, so fuck 'em, right?

High Speed rail rarely if ever pays for itself

At least Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr (the long distance branch of the German railway system) is turning a profit. (In 2002 they introduced an innovative new pricing system, but they recovered from that 2.5 years later...)

They are running their third generation HSR now (ICE 3) and have recently placed orders for 300 IC X trains.

there are keyboards at a CES?

i thought everybody uses these touchy smarty iThingies these days.

i thought keyboards are for ubergeeks only these days.

Here is a very fine example of an supernova in another galaxy that is visible from earth, but modulating this to carry information would be somewhat challenging.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/SN1994D.jpg/600px-SN1994D.jpg

That is one beautiful pic though.

Alien life in the universe that we could encounter, depending on the climactic conditions, gravity and atmosphere would be very different from humans to say the least. They would not be all humanoid races that speak english and can walk and act just like humans, they might be boneless creatures like an octopus or evolved dolphins that pilot ships full of water, or something that we have not even encountered yet. Dolphins show amazing intelligence so it is easy to imagine, that if they evolved over the course of millions of years on a remote planet and developed mathematics and science, they could invent space flight. Star Trek had humanoid aliens as standard, but the science fiction of Larry Niven envisaged quite different creatures such as the puppeteers.

Not to forget the even stranger aliens in the book Sundiver by David Brin. Discovery channel one time showed a Jupiter sized Earth like planet that had small creatures crawling along its surface that had to eat continually in order to have enough energy to move in the massive gravity. I am not sure if it is possible for such a large planet to form, most large planets that have been discovered are gas giants. But any alien planet we visited could have alien bacteria that we would not have a immunity to and it could be very dangerous if we brought it back to Earth. So any future space exploration would still require caution.

Does George Berkeley Exist to Hear It?

but then I would say a manufacturer shouldn't remove them because Apple removed them.

You mean IBM, not Apple. Apple followed about 15 years after.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Lenovo-X61-Tablet-Mode.jpg you mean hardware-button-less like this?

dwarf?