For some reason here in the USA public transportation is considered evil. For some reason here in the USA public transportation is considered somewhat left-wing.
Wouldn't happen. We have centuries-old technology to prevent that, and some new technology also to stop it.
For starters, if there was any suspicion of foul play, we could cut power to the track, and the train stops accelerating and grinds to a halt. If the levitation is powered by electromagnets, the deceleration will occur much more rapidly, as the train will grind along the track.
Secondly, a high-speed maglev would almost certainly be equipped with some sort of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) as is used on most metro and high-speed systems today. This would most likely allow for remote-control, or would prevent the train from operating at 300mph in an area where it was unsafe for it to do so. Manual override is extremely difficult on purpose.
Finally, the century-old solution: Somebody shouts "Hey Boss! There's a train approaching down the tunnel at 300mph". Station manager then flicks a switch, and at the next junction, the train travels away from the station or derails. We learned how to prevent runaway trains back in the 1800s, and a terrorist-controlled train is no different.
Also, most large train stations are configured in such a way that a 300mph train would either pass straight through them, or be forced around several narrow curves (which would cause it to derail before reaching the station). Assuming you got a straight-shot through the railyard, a train going through Grand Central would likely plow straight through the building causing slightly more damage than a dump truck doing the same thing. A train traveling to Penn Station would suffer a slightly different fate, and slam into a wall of bedrock. Bad for the people on the train, but the station probably wouldn't be damaged (and frankly, terrorists wouldn't want to attack Penn Station, given that it's a place that's hated by virtually everybody)
So, no. The worst a terrorist could do to a train is to kill the people on-board. It wouldn't be pretty, but the damage would be largely contained.
I just don't think there is a commercial viability for supersonic flight. The need to decrease flight times from 20 hours to 5 hours is just not enough of an incentive to cover all the associated investments and pitfalls of implementation.
Concorde was profitable. Its demise was met because nobody was willing to build new airframes, or maintain the existing ones, along with the fact that conventional First-Class flights were more profitable than supersonic ones.
If some actual competition were to occur, Supersonic flight may very well reappear at some in the future, especially if there are additional technological breakthroughs to make it cheaper, quieter, and/or faster. Also, remember that much of the technology on Concorde was developed explicitly for it. Who knows what we might come up with if we try again?
I doubt it. If anything, we would want Iran to have 100% free and uncensored access for all citizens.
A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.
On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.
As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective, it's been that way for several generations (and is largely the fault of previous American and European intervention in the region). Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.
I hate to defend the current Iranian regime, but I don't believe for a moment that it's remotely as bad as Bush makes it out to be.
To reduce power consumption, you either have to reduce the voltage or the current.
If you shuffle your feet across the carpet, you'll generate static electricity at thousands of volts. The reason that this doesn't kill you is that the currents are absolutely tiny, making the power transmitted between your socks and the carpet also extremely small, and non-hazardous.
These guys are claiming that we can most effectively reduce power consumption by focusing on reducing the voltage required for the chips to run. Although you've essentially got a 50/50 chance of being correct with this claim, the reasoning behind it is far from trivial.
Sure, it would identify the average US citizen, but it would be useless against organised crime and terrorism. Let me make this perfectly clear: TERRORISTS ARE NOT BOND VILLAINS.
They don't have massive teams of plastic surgeons standing by to modify the appearances of their operatives. What would the point be, especially when the attacks often result in the death of the attacker, and they have hordes of disillusioned youth with no criminal history.
There are no laser cannons, nor are there secret underground bunkers. 9/11 was carried out using nothing but box-cutters. At that rate, prevention is quite a bit more important than catching the perpetrators after the attack takes place (if the attacker even survives at all).
I'm sorry, but this system is going to do nothing to prevent terrorism. It might help catch repeat sex-offenders, but from what I hear, the biometric data from convicted offenders is already collected and stored.
Re:I guess I can stop waiting for Linux support
on
NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA
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· Score: 3, Informative
Unless something's changed in the past year or two it's been since I stopped using Nvidia, their drivers always tended to be quite good.
They were Binary-only, but they were good in that they were fast, stable, and supported all the major functions of their cards. Hardly half-assed if you ask me.
Then I thought more, since I live in America where reality based communities don't alway align with the faith based government.
You seem to be under the impression that things are better elsewhere. Are they?
The America-bashing is beginning to get somewhat out of hand. Although it is actually quite a good thing that Americans are once again inherently distrustful of their government, things aren't exactly a bed of roses elsewhere.
As an American who's been living in Europe for a small chunk of time, I can safely say that we both have our own pile of issues to work out. The American government is certainly not without its faults, especially over the past few years, but it's also not something that we can't fix on our own, nor does it make us all bad people.
A defeatist attitude will solve nothing, nor is it something that has ever been a characteristic of the American psyche. Although it all appears to be going to shit at the moment, it's still possible to turn the tables, and there's a good chance that you'll have one such opportunity to do so today.
If you bottle up all of your fundraising into two days, and get a bunch of wealthy donors, those statistics will look somewhat impressive, no matter how meaningless they actually are.
On the same note, he's gotten enough press to be considered "fair", especially considering his non-celebrity status.
The whole newsletter fiasco certainly didn't do him any favors. Yes, I do realize that he didn't write them, although he's done a fine job of skirting around the issue that he damn well knew about them. The fact that he knew about those newsletters and continued to fund them makes him every bit as guilty as if he wrote them himself.
Paul's an extremist. I don't understand why his supporters keep trying to spin him as being a moderate mainstream candidate.
John Kerry was a pretty good candidate that didn't have a chance of winning.
Sure, his views were solid, and he almost certainly (by the standards of a republican OR a democrat) done a better job as president than Bush, but he was quite boring and unremarkable.
It took a perverse miracle for the Democratic party to find somebody who could lose to Bush in 2004, and John Kerry was that miracle.
Regardless of the party he's running for -- he's not a mainstream candidate, which can easily be seen from his views.
A libertarian running as a republican is still a libertarian.
As for media coverage, it's pretty easy to see how one needs to achieve some sort of "celebrity" status before entering the election. There's not much about Ron Paul that makes him stand out from the crowd of other libertarian candidates, apart from the fact that he's a congressman (there have are also been socialist congressmen) and a tad more moderate than most libertarians. The media has very little to report about a person like Ron Paul -- he's boring (although those newsletters were good for a laugh).
I'm afraid that Ron Paul is little more than an internet phenomenon. There's no conspiracy going on. He's a fringe candidate, and the same cries have been heard from 3rd-party candidates for decades.
I pay a LOT in property taxes ($5000+ per annum). I am very vocal at my school board meetings, and I happily call the teachers thieves when they ask for more money, and the administrators fraudsters when they lie about the budget.
Ah. You're one of those message board trolls that cross over into the domain of real life. I really hate those thieves who work for wages well below the poverty line to educate your children. Fuck those bastards they don't deserve a dime of your money.
I helped two neighbors (poor!) get jobs shoveling walkways this winter, and their families are over $1000 richer each. I help the poor with charity, not aggression or entitlements. The (legal or illegal) immigrants who steal from me are just as bad as the citizens who steal from me.
Tell me. Did your neighbors properly declare the income they received from shoveling walkways? If not (and I sincerely doubt it), they're no better than an illegal immigrant by your logic. If they made $1k a pop for a whole winter, they're probably also on the brink of starvation. Also, what do you libertarians have against (il)legal immigrants anyhow? If you don't want the government to provide any sort of civil/social services on its own, how exactly would they be infringing upon your rights? There's not even a whole lot of evidence that illegals are even making any sort of dent into the tax base, as they typically don't utilize any public services for fear of being caught. On the flipside, you could provide a legal path to immigration, and set the tax code so that any immigrants must pay their fair share of the tax burden. Nobody loses.
Australia: "They're cute little bunny rabbits. What could they possibly do?"
Along the same lines, by your logic, there's nobody forcing anybody to live in these regions (and all signs seem to indicate taht they're not particularly well-suited for large-scale human habitation, which is likely why large cities don't tend to be located along the equator)
Can we please drop the whole Us vs. Them mentality?
It's doing more damage to America than any Democrat or Republican ever could. Both sides need to bite the bullet and accept the actions of the people they elected, rather than blaming it on the political parties (both of which happen to be unabashedly corrupt at the moment).
To be fair, NYC's got a huge rat problem that exists far beyond the kitchens of restaurants.
Although most everywhere else, the presence of rats would typically indicate despicable sanitary conditions, finding a rat in NYC is sadly not all that uncommon, and can happen in even the cleanest and well-sealed of kitchens.
Granted, the department of health *should* deal with the cases harshly to keep restaurant-owners on their toes, but the "I'm never eating there again" comments were overblown and ill-informed. It's a sad reality of NYC life. If we can somehow breed subway-proof cats, I'm sure the problem will be solved in a jiffy (and replaced by an infestation of enormous subway-proof cats)
They've been around since the 1970s, and appear to be a "disinterested 3rd party" that mediates disputes between federal agencies and the unions which have reached an impasse.
They're part of the FLRA, which is the larger body that is an umbrella organization for dealing with labor issues within the federal government.
It's not particularly surprising that such a body exists. I'd be more surprised if it didn't.
If that were applicable, then Wal-Mart could accuse me of being a shoplifter and sieze all my assets and I'd be liable for all the items that I don't have reciepts for that they stock.
I wouldn't suggest that if I were you.
(Sidenote: Wal-Mart wouldn't be that thick-skulled, given that they're noted for saving every shred of information about their customers, including transaction records (cash or otherwise), and video surveillance. If you've stolen from them, they already know about it, and have hard evidence to prove it.)
Mozilla only gained mainstream acceptance once a developer independent of the Mozilla organization took the codebase, and discarded a large portion of the code to create Phoenix (later FireBird, now FireFox).
Prior to that, it was a slow, ugly bloated mess.
Ironically, now that the old Mozilla devs are managing the project, it's once again becoming a slow, bloated mess.
Had the project been properly managed, I don't think it would have taken 10 years.
We've been trying that for a long, long time. I don't think the Jersey Turnpike can get much bigger.
As somebody who's lived in New Jersey for his entire life, I feel the need to point out that virtually none of us actually drive on that road. It was planned as a practical joke on the rest of the Eastern Seaboard, as revenge for all of those jokes being made at our expense, which is why it has virtually no exits in New Jersey itself.
(Philadelphia and NYC retorted by forcing Camden and Newark on us. Touché.)
But in all seriousness, the rest of the US has absolutely no right to make fun of New-Jerseyans for our roads or diving habits, considering that the vast majority of our traffic problems are due to through-traffic between DC and NYC. Apart from a few isolated locales (which are easily avoidable), commuter traffic really isn't that bad.
One of every 3 users of mass transit, and 2 out of every 3 rail riders lives in the New York Metro area. New York realized ages ago that automobile transportation was completely unsustainable for a large city, and built the world's most extensive Metro/Rail network as a result. Given the supply-driven price of parking in NYC, rail is a very affordable alternative, even though the ticket price might seem a bit high at first.
Although we've still got a ways to come for more local forms of transit, city commuters in New Jersey and Long Island tend to be the heaviest users of mass transit in the country.
(As a sidenote, the US really needs to take a lesson in urban planning from just about any other country on the planet. Britain does a fairly good job of keeping schools and urban centers within walking distance of residences, even for fairly small towns and villages.)
Or in the case of something as old and abandoned as OS/2, there's a pretty good chance that IBM don't even *know* what code is theirs, and what isn't. The amount of time and effort it would take to do an entire "audit" of the OS would be huge, considering that it's essentially an abandoned product.
The important bit to note is that this is the first time the pound has taken a hit against the Dollar in quite a long time -- and it's been a significant one at that, considering the short timeframe.
Likewise, a more enlightening comparison would be against the Euro, where a *VERY* perceptible dip is noticeable, considering that the exchange rate between the two has remained constant, apart from a bit of "noise" for the past few years. This is the first time the pound has taken a noticeable "hit" against the Euro. The dollar's been rather volatile for the past few years, so it's not exactly the best benchmark to compare against -- the EU, on the other hand, is a quite good benchmark to tell how well the pound's been doing, especially considering that Britain is a part of the EU and all....
Similarly, fears over the US economy caused international markets to take the biggest hit they've seen since 9/11 today. The US exchanges aren't trading today because of MLK day, so it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be a "black Tuesday", although there are fears that it could happen, especially considering what happened abroad today.
The dollar has definitely taken a definite hit over the past 8 years (and is inexplicably recovering at the moment....), but this is the first time that the Pound Sterling itself has taken a hit, which is indeed something to make note of.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but NASA and Russia have been doing this via considerably more "low-tech" methods since the 60s. Early spy satellites took their photographs on film, and sent capsules down containing the film exposures that were to be developed. They were then retrieved in mid-air by an aircraft.
Still... a cool idea nonetheless. I wonder if the ISS is fitted out with any sort of small-capacity cargo-return capsule... (But at the same time, the space agencies probably wouldn't risk the health of an astronaut that had a life-or-death need for lab tests. They'd play it safe, and send him home in favor of the PR nightmare that would ensue if an astronaut that was known to be sick died while in orbit.)
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Wouldn't happen. We have centuries-old technology to prevent that, and some new technology also to stop it.
For starters, if there was any suspicion of foul play, we could cut power to the track, and the train stops accelerating and grinds to a halt. If the levitation is powered by electromagnets, the deceleration will occur much more rapidly, as the train will grind along the track.
Secondly, a high-speed maglev would almost certainly be equipped with some sort of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) as is used on most metro and high-speed systems today. This would most likely allow for remote-control, or would prevent the train from operating at 300mph in an area where it was unsafe for it to do so. Manual override is extremely difficult on purpose.
Finally, the century-old solution: Somebody shouts "Hey Boss! There's a train approaching down the tunnel at 300mph". Station manager then flicks a switch, and at the next junction, the train travels away from the station or derails. We learned how to prevent runaway trains back in the 1800s, and a terrorist-controlled train is no different.
Also, most large train stations are configured in such a way that a 300mph train would either pass straight through them, or be forced around several narrow curves (which would cause it to derail before reaching the station). Assuming you got a straight-shot through the railyard, a train going through Grand Central would likely plow straight through the building causing slightly more damage than a dump truck doing the same thing. A train traveling to Penn Station would suffer a slightly different fate, and slam into a wall of bedrock. Bad for the people on the train, but the station probably wouldn't be damaged (and frankly, terrorists wouldn't want to attack Penn Station, given that it's a place that's hated by virtually everybody)
So, no. The worst a terrorist could do to a train is to kill the people on-board. It wouldn't be pretty, but the damage would be largely contained.
Concorde was profitable. Its demise was met because nobody was willing to build new airframes, or maintain the existing ones, along with the fact that conventional First-Class flights were more profitable than supersonic ones.
If some actual competition were to occur, Supersonic flight may very well reappear at some in the future, especially if there are additional technological breakthroughs to make it cheaper, quieter, and/or faster. Also, remember that much of the technology on Concorde was developed explicitly for it. Who knows what we might come up with if we try again?
A responsible citizen, yes, would want the Iranian people to take matters into their own hands, and make sure that their government leaders are accountable and responsible.
On the other hand, if you're an American politician trying to sell a war, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt play very well to your cause on both sides of the table.
As it stands, I don't believe that the Iranian people are all too upset at their government. Although their approach to civil rights is a bit backwards from the Western perspective, it's been that way for several generations (and is largely the fault of previous American and European intervention in the region). Likewise, the Iranian government doesn't strike me as being all that secretive.
I hate to defend the current Iranian regime, but I don't believe for a moment that it's remotely as bad as Bush makes it out to be.
Power = Current * Voltage
To reduce power consumption, you either have to reduce the voltage or the current.
If you shuffle your feet across the carpet, you'll generate static electricity at thousands of volts. The reason that this doesn't kill you is that the currents are absolutely tiny, making the power transmitted between your socks and the carpet also extremely small, and non-hazardous.
These guys are claiming that we can most effectively reduce power consumption by focusing on reducing the voltage required for the chips to run. Although you've essentially got a 50/50 chance of being correct with this claim, the reasoning behind it is far from trivial.
They don't have massive teams of plastic surgeons standing by to modify the appearances of their operatives. What would the point be, especially when the attacks often result in the death of the attacker, and they have hordes of disillusioned youth with no criminal history.
There are no laser cannons, nor are there secret underground bunkers. 9/11 was carried out using nothing but box-cutters. At that rate, prevention is quite a bit more important than catching the perpetrators after the attack takes place (if the attacker even survives at all).
I'm sorry, but this system is going to do nothing to prevent terrorism. It might help catch repeat sex-offenders, but from what I hear, the biometric data from convicted offenders is already collected and stored.
Unless something's changed in the past year or two it's been since I stopped using Nvidia, their drivers always tended to be quite good.
They were Binary-only, but they were good in that they were fast, stable, and supported all the major functions of their cards. Hardly half-assed if you ask me.
You seem to be under the impression that things are better elsewhere. Are they?
The America-bashing is beginning to get somewhat out of hand. Although it is actually quite a good thing that Americans are once again inherently distrustful of their government, things aren't exactly a bed of roses elsewhere.
As an American who's been living in Europe for a small chunk of time, I can safely say that we both have our own pile of issues to work out. The American government is certainly not without its faults, especially over the past few years, but it's also not something that we can't fix on our own, nor does it make us all bad people.
A defeatist attitude will solve nothing, nor is it something that has ever been a characteristic of the American psyche. Although it all appears to be going to shit at the moment, it's still possible to turn the tables, and there's a good chance that you'll have one such opportunity to do so today.
We're not totally fucked yet.
If you bottle up all of your fundraising into two days, and get a bunch of wealthy donors, those statistics will look somewhat impressive, no matter how meaningless they actually are.
On the same note, he's gotten enough press to be considered "fair", especially considering his non-celebrity status.
The whole newsletter fiasco certainly didn't do him any favors. Yes, I do realize that he didn't write them, although he's done a fine job of skirting around the issue that he damn well knew about them. The fact that he knew about those newsletters and continued to fund them makes him every bit as guilty as if he wrote them himself.
Paul's an extremist. I don't understand why his supporters keep trying to spin him as being a moderate mainstream candidate.
John Kerry was a pretty good candidate that didn't have a chance of winning.
Sure, his views were solid, and he almost certainly (by the standards of a republican OR a democrat) done a better job as president than Bush, but he was quite boring and unremarkable.
It took a perverse miracle for the Democratic party to find somebody who could lose to Bush in 2004, and John Kerry was that miracle.
Regardless of the party he's running for -- he's not a mainstream candidate, which can easily be seen from his views.
A libertarian running as a republican is still a libertarian.
As for media coverage, it's pretty easy to see how one needs to achieve some sort of "celebrity" status before entering the election. There's not much about Ron Paul that makes him stand out from the crowd of other libertarian candidates, apart from the fact that he's a congressman (there have are also been socialist congressmen) and a tad more moderate than most libertarians. The media has very little to report about a person like Ron Paul -- he's boring (although those newsletters were good for a laugh).
I'm afraid that Ron Paul is little more than an internet phenomenon. There's no conspiracy going on. He's a fringe candidate, and the same cries have been heard from 3rd-party candidates for decades.
Ah. You're one of those message board trolls that cross over into the domain of real life. I really hate those thieves who work for wages well below the poverty line to educate your children. Fuck those bastards they don't deserve a dime of your money.
Tell me. Did your neighbors properly declare the income they received from shoveling walkways? If not (and I sincerely doubt it), they're no better than an illegal immigrant by your logic. If they made $1k a pop for a whole winter, they're probably also on the brink of starvation. Also, what do you libertarians have against (il)legal immigrants anyhow? If you don't want the government to provide any sort of civil/social services on its own, how exactly would they be infringing upon your rights? There's not even a whole lot of evidence that illegals are even making any sort of dent into the tax base, as they typically don't utilize any public services for fear of being caught. On the flipside, you could provide a legal path to immigration, and set the tax code so that any immigrants must pay their fair share of the tax burden. Nobody loses.
Thank god you're an anti-voter.
Well, I mean..... office chairs aren't exactly cheap.Heck of a job, Balmy!
Australia: "They're cute little bunny rabbits. What could they possibly do?"
Along the same lines, by your logic, there's nobody forcing anybody to live in these regions (and all signs seem to indicate taht they're not particularly well-suited for large-scale human habitation, which is likely why large cities don't tend to be located along the equator)
It's dangerous. And Siberia's cold. Live with it.
Never underestimate the power of trolls in large groups.
Can we please drop the whole Us vs. Them mentality?
It's doing more damage to America than any Democrat or Republican ever could. Both sides need to bite the bullet and accept the actions of the people they elected, rather than blaming it on the political parties (both of which happen to be unabashedly corrupt at the moment).
To be fair, NYC's got a huge rat problem that exists far beyond the kitchens of restaurants.
Although most everywhere else, the presence of rats would typically indicate despicable sanitary conditions, finding a rat in NYC is sadly not all that uncommon, and can happen in even the cleanest and well-sealed of kitchens.
Granted, the department of health *should* deal with the cases harshly to keep restaurant-owners on their toes, but the "I'm never eating there again" comments were overblown and ill-informed. It's a sad reality of NYC life. If we can somehow breed subway-proof cats, I'm sure the problem will be solved in a jiffy (and replaced by an infestation of enormous subway-proof cats)
Also note, that (somewhat hypocritically) all versions of Windows prior to Vista borrow quite a bit of their networking code from BSD.
Go grep the executables. You'll find the standard BSD copyright notice inside.
They've been around since the 1970s, and appear to be a "disinterested 3rd party" that mediates disputes between federal agencies and the unions which have reached an impasse.
They're part of the FLRA, which is the larger body that is an umbrella organization for dealing with labor issues within the federal government.
It's not particularly surprising that such a body exists. I'd be more surprised if it didn't.
I wouldn't suggest that if I were you.
(Sidenote: Wal-Mart wouldn't be that thick-skulled, given that they're noted for saving every shred of information about their customers, including transaction records (cash or otherwise), and video surveillance. If you've stolen from them, they already know about it, and have hard evidence to prove it.)
Mozilla only gained mainstream acceptance once a developer independent of the Mozilla organization took the codebase, and discarded a large portion of the code to create Phoenix (later FireBird, now FireFox).
Prior to that, it was a slow, ugly bloated mess.
Ironically, now that the old Mozilla devs are managing the project, it's once again becoming a slow, bloated mess.
Had the project been properly managed, I don't think it would have taken 10 years.
As somebody who's lived in New Jersey for his entire life, I feel the need to point out that virtually none of us actually drive on that road. It was planned as a practical joke on the rest of the Eastern Seaboard, as revenge for all of those jokes being made at our expense, which is why it has virtually no exits in New Jersey itself.
(Philadelphia and NYC retorted by forcing Camden and Newark on us. Touché.)
But in all seriousness, the rest of the US has absolutely no right to make fun of New-Jerseyans for our roads or diving habits, considering that the vast majority of our traffic problems are due to through-traffic between DC and NYC. Apart from a few isolated locales (which are easily avoidable), commuter traffic really isn't that bad.
One of every 3 users of mass transit, and 2 out of every 3 rail riders lives in the New York Metro area. New York realized ages ago that automobile transportation was completely unsustainable for a large city, and built the world's most extensive Metro/Rail network as a result. Given the supply-driven price of parking in NYC, rail is a very affordable alternative, even though the ticket price might seem a bit high at first.
Although we've still got a ways to come for more local forms of transit, city commuters in New Jersey and Long Island tend to be the heaviest users of mass transit in the country.
(As a sidenote, the US really needs to take a lesson in urban planning from just about any other country on the planet. Britain does a fairly good job of keeping schools and urban centers within walking distance of residences, even for fairly small towns and villages.)
Or in the case of something as old and abandoned as OS/2, there's a pretty good chance that IBM don't even *know* what code is theirs, and what isn't. The amount of time and effort it would take to do an entire "audit" of the OS would be huge, considering that it's essentially an abandoned product.
IBM doesn't want another SCO happening.
The important bit to note is that this is the first time the pound has taken a hit against the Dollar in quite a long time -- and it's been a significant one at that, considering the short timeframe.
Likewise, a more enlightening comparison would be against the Euro, where a *VERY* perceptible dip is noticeable, considering that the exchange rate between the two has remained constant, apart from a bit of "noise" for the past few years. This is the first time the pound has taken a noticeable "hit" against the Euro. The dollar's been rather volatile for the past few years, so it's not exactly the best benchmark to compare against -- the EU, on the other hand, is a quite good benchmark to tell how well the pound's been doing, especially considering that Britain is a part of the EU and all....
Similarly, fears over the US economy caused international markets to take the biggest hit they've seen since 9/11 today. The US exchanges aren't trading today because of MLK day, so it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be a "black Tuesday", although there are fears that it could happen, especially considering what happened abroad today.
The dollar has definitely taken a definite hit over the past 8 years (and is inexplicably recovering at the moment....), but this is the first time that the Pound Sterling itself has taken a hit, which is indeed something to make note of.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but NASA and Russia have been doing this via considerably more "low-tech" methods since the 60s. Early spy satellites took their photographs on film, and sent capsules down containing the film exposures that were to be developed. They were then retrieved in mid-air by an aircraft.
Still... a cool idea nonetheless. I wonder if the ISS is fitted out with any sort of small-capacity cargo-return capsule... (But at the same time, the space agencies probably wouldn't risk the health of an astronaut that had a life-or-death need for lab tests. They'd play it safe, and send him home in favor of the PR nightmare that would ensue if an astronaut that was known to be sick died while in orbit.)