Posts by RRRoamer

Uhm, no... @ Brett

Except that this is only concerned with the CHIPSET, not the graphics card. Apple can use whatever graphics they want, especially since the tend to go with higher end CPUs anyway which have a PCIe interface for graphics.

@Steven Jones

"According to ATF gun-tracing data, 90 percent of the traceable weapons used in Mexican drug violence originated in the United States"

The bit that you are leaving out (intentionally or unintentionally...) is that the key part of that statement is "traceable weapons". Only about 10 percent of the weapons in this Mexican drug violence were traceable. Given that pretty much 100% of all guns legally sold in the US are traceable, is it any surprise that if you only look at the traceable guns you find a large percentage came from the US?

Where is the other 90% of weapons coming from?

Still going about this the wrong way...

Vacuum tubes...

Decades ago they demonstrated that a mag lev train in a vacuum tube (aka: REALLY long tunnel!) wold allow you to send a person from New York to Miami for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas.

Given that it would take my car about 45 gallons to do the same, that's not bad.

You would also be able to make that trip in less than one hour. It would accelerate half the trip and decelerate the other half. The infrastructure would be expensive to build, but if they just built tunnels between major metropolitan areas, it would still replace over half the commercial air traffic (if not more) that we have today. It would also be zero carbon (assuming nuclear, solar or other "green" power technology) as the system it electric.

Learn how a refrigeration system works

To all you people who are popping off about "It is just cheaper, not more efficient!", you might want to learn a bit about how a refrigeration system works before you open your mouth. It makes you look ignorant (or possibly just exposes what you are...)

The concept you are missing is called "Delta T". Heat flows from from hot to cold (that delta T or DT going forward) and it is pretty linear: the greater the DT, the greater the rate of heat flow.

Your standard refrigeration system (car AC, refrigerator, freezer, refrigerated air home cooling, etc) uses this principle twice: the first time, it heats the refrigerate significantly by compressing it, then it dumps the excess energy by allowing it to flow to the outside air (normally). The refrigerant is then cooled significantly by expanding it back to a gas. This cold refrigerant is now much cooler than air it is cooling, so the heat flows from the air (inside your car, your refrigerator or house) to the refrigerant which heats the refrigerant back up while cooling off what you are cooling.

Here is the rub: it takes ENERGY to compress that gas to make it hotter than the outside outside sink. The hotter your sink is, the MORE energy it takes to make the refrigeration system work. When your sink is actually COOLER than your target temperature for what you are conditioning, you can move that energy with much less energy consumption.

One way to do this is to find a cooler heat sink. Geotherm systems do this by dumping the excess energy to the ground (via buried tubes) or to water sources like rivers or lakes. Trying to keep a house at 21C when it is 38C outside is MUCH easier if you are trying to dump the excess heat to a sink that is 13C. Running the AC system at night when it is only 18C (for example) is WAY better than trying to dump the heat to a 38C outside air even if it isn't quite as effective as dumping it to 13C ground.

So yes, there ARE real ENERGY savings by doing the heat dumping at night. The fact that you can also do it using CHEAPER electricity is also a very nice bonus.

Funny that ...

the police are swindling the people out of the money a second time.

Uh...

They were still working on this???? Derick made more progress on his Battle Cruiser game by himself than they did on DNF as a team.

That is just sad.

@Stiles

So exactly why should an interface that Intel created to tie their CPUs to their chipsets be public domain? Just because you think it should be???

It has been a LONG time since CPU interfaces where standardized across multiple vendors (aka: socket compatible).

This wasn't created as an open interface for the industry (like PCI or PCI Express), but was created as a closed interface between their CPUs and their chipsets. If you want to use that interface, then you have to license it.

Whether the existing license covers this new interface will be determined by the courts.

Eventually...

@Charlie Griffith

Why would you expect ANYTHING different on this site??? Adult deep thought it is not...

But TWO turbines failing on the same flight???

What are the changes that BOTH of those turbines would fail on the same flight??? The overall reliability of a jet engine is out of this world. If you have seen what some turbines have been through and STILL produce usable power, you would be shocked.

About the only thing I can think of that would take out both of his engines in short order would be either running out of fuel, or seriously contaminated fuel. Jet's don't run on water very well.

But, either way, we will never know what really happened to cause this crash. The Air Force is VERY good at making sure only the proper story goes out. I'll never forget that "mechanical malfunction" that caused a F117 Nighthawk to crash and burn during takeoff at Holloman AFB in '89 (or '90. Some time around then). My dad saw the video of what REALLY caused that "mechanical malfunction".

Stupidity at it's best...

I am VERY sorry to see this happening to this guy for, well, nothing...

On the other hand, I am VERY happy that it is not JUST the USA that has completely lost it's collective freaking mind with stuff like this!

Some things will have to be done eventually

You know, the bus and phone model actually does apply: If every single person with a phone tried to place a call at the same time, it would collapse under it's own weight. If every single person had an unlimited bus pass and decided to get on a bus and stay there for a few days, the buses wouldn't be able to move.

I love having lot's of bandwidth, but the few hogs out there ARE going to have suck it up and either pay for all the "excess" capacity they are using (relative to everyone else) or get limited to how much they can eat.

Heck, you could also apply the "all you can eat" restaurant model to it as well: It works the vast majority of people go in for a meal, eat until they are full (or even a bit beyond), then leave. What would happen if everyone went there, then camped out until they were hungry again??? For several days???

(untittled)

The really scary thought is how many people will think this is a GOOD idea???

I'm not afraid of having a solid ID system (something that is actually secure for starters) as we really need it in this day and age. But an RFID system built in so they can scan the vehicle as you drive up??? I don't think so.

More tidbits...

1) This article does NOT say how many stations there are world wide. It only says that the September data from NINETY of them were used for October.

2) Screwing with the data to make things look worse is a great way to strengthen the position of people such as myself that do NOT believe this is human caused. Let's see, the people that are getting paid to investigate this horrible thing that is human caused global warming are screwing with the data to make it look like GW is MUCH worse than it is... Now why would the POSSIBLY want to do something like that??? Job security, perhaps?

Then why is there an extradition treaty between the US and Germany???

If Germany won't extradite, why did they sign an extradition treaty? They might be more anal about the evidence presented with an arrest warrant, but saying the don't extradite is a stretch.

I remember the same sort of issues when object oriented languages where coming out

I can remember back when C++ started to make in roads against ANSI C. You had three camps: 1) C rules and objects are for wimps that can't keep track of their pointers, 2) Objects are the future and that "old school" coding is dying fast, so dump it quick before you start to stink too, and 3) Some things object programming is MUCH better, some things "old school" is faster and quicker.

It was kind of funny watching the battles. You would get some C++ snob that would figure out a way to use 20 pages of code and a dozen objects to implement the "Hello, World" program. Then the C guys would end up duplicating 80% of their code a dozen times over just to avoid the possibility of using C++ and an object. And yes, these are exaggerated examples!!!

It looks like we are there again. We DO have to develop a better way to program the new, complex CPUs. I suspect that someone will end up developing a new way to program things that will assist people in making modular code that can easily synchronize with all the other modules. Of course, I don't have CLUE how to actually do it, but I sure do hope someone somewhere DOES have a clue!

What do you expect???

The courts in this country have simply gone off the deep end. "Judicial Activist" is a term that the left LOVES as it is often the ONLY way they can get there crazy shit implemented (take a close look at the states that have same sex marriage. How many where implemented by judges and how many by legislation or direct vote of the people? How many have voted to ban it at the state constitutional level?). The same goes for a lot of the "green" crap that was forced down people's throats by the courts.

Hell, even the Supreme Court has gone off the deep end more than once by trying to create law from the bench. That whole Roe vs. Wade is a VERY classic example.

Now you have some two bit tyrant/judge who has decided that his authority will reach as far as he wishes it to reach and the fact that his authority stops at the state line and these web sites are located in another country is completely beside the point because HE has decided his authority extends around the globe. Welcome to the 21st century.

A lot of us get laughed at when we try to limit judges to doing there fucking job and not allow them to create law from the bench. Normally, it's the folks on the left doing the laughing because they think we are just in opposition to WHAT they are trying to do (in my case, that is often quite true). But in reality, most of us are FAR more against HOW they are going about it.

And we are against how they are going about it because that slippery slope leads to stupid rulings like this. Just remember this the next time you are cheering on some other stupid ass judge making up some other stupid ass law that you HAPPEN TO AGREE with from the bench.

What a STUPID ass ruling

I don't know why I should expect different from judges these days... It has been a LONG time since judges simply upheld the law as written. Now this idiot thinks he has jurisdiction over the whole freaking world, let alone the US.

Maybe we need to get a "jurisdiction is where the server is located" kind of law passed at the international level.

Same arguments. Different technology...

Give me a brake!

A lot of the pissing and moaning on this article is pretty much the exact same things people were saying about ABS. Or electronic traction control. Or electronic stability systems. Or whatever...

Face it: ABS systems can stop a car better IN THE DRY than 95% of all drivers on the road. And it can do it better than about 99% of all drivers when the road is wet or otherwise degraded. Now, those percentages will drop SOME if you would actuallyput people in a braking test (vs. real world emergency stop situations) simply because they might actually be paying attention to the test.

But in the real world? The ABS doesn't get distracted at the worse possible moment, unlike the driver of the vehicle. The first systems were not perfect by any means, but they got better generation after generation until they are where they are now.

The same can be said for ETC and ESS. Hell, the stability systems can do things people simple CAN NOT DO because we activate ALL the brakes at each wheel at the same time. ESS doesn't have to do that.

So, will these new brake assists be perfect? Not likely. But they WILL get better and better with each generation until they are indeed able to do a much better job than most people most of the time.

Let's face it: People have proven themselves to be pretty stupid as a group. Because of our abilities to do incredibly stupid things while driving 3 ton vehicles at 120 kph, the engineers WILL develop better and better systems to save our asses and the asses of other unlucky people who happen to be on the same roadway. The lawyers WILL end up forcing this on us. They are already are.

It is just a matter of time before all of our cars are talking to each other and passing information about where they are, what direction they are heading, what types of input the drive is giving, road conditions, etc between themselves. Hopefully, they will actually be able to use this information to prevent accidents, but I suspect it will AT LEAST be used to automatically catch speeders by having our cars snitch on us.

And for those who say they will just make sure the car WON'T exceed they speed limit, I say WRONG! They make WAY too much money on speeding tax to let that baby go!

@James

It sounds like your cousins friends buddies neighbor told a tall tell. One thing that ISN'T going on here is keeping people OUT so there will be more jobs for citizens.

Period.

Companies are out sourcing jobs left and right. They also buy up the assorted tech visas just about as fast as they become available. Each and every year. Not to mention, Congress has expanded that pool of visas pretty much every year.

So, if he had a sponsored visa and he was fired, THEN he would not be able to work in the US. But he wasn't denied entry just because "his job could be done by a US citizen".

Hell, we have over 18 MILLION "guest" workers here that don't have visas. Or any other form of legal entry documents and they seem to be doing pretty well.

Maybe your cousins friends buddies neighbor should have just walked down the street a bit and crossed at the "unofficial" crossing and then went back to find a new job.

As for the bull shit going on at the border crossings, don't think for a minute I support it. Hell, I hate traveling withing the country (flying) because of the "guilty until proven POSSIBLY innocent" security model they have enacted these days.

Jefferson is rolling over in his grave right now.

I LOVE watching everyone over react here...

First, I have to ask Vendicar, did you actually READ this article??? If so, where does "IBM" come into play? Per your points:

1) No one is accusing AMD of ANYTHING.

2) When you steel something, the cops don't have to wait until you sell it to someone else before it becomes a crime.

3) Let's see: Intel is California company. Most of their servers are in Arizona. This guy worked in Massachusetts. The ONLY US crime fighting organization that actually DOES have jurisdiction in crimes across state lines IS the FBI.

4) If you ever read the rules and regulations regarding classified documents, you would know that there are little clauses in there that basically say you ONLY have the right to access those documents for COMPANY business. I'm fairly sure that making a copy so you can "impress" your new employer is NOT considered company business. So, no, he WASN'T permitted to access them for that function. Oh, and he also signed a legal document at his exit interview that said he had returned or destroyed ALL copies of classified information.

5) Pretty much answered in item 4.

6) Yeah. Try using that as an argument in any court case and see how long you keep your butt out of jail. All those folks "trading" mp3 didn't steel them, they simply "copied" them...

So the question I have for you is this: Why are you so quick to stick up for this guy? Hell, you act like it is the crime of the century for Intel to actually call the cops on someone that accessed information they didn't need for their job right before quitting to go to work for the competition. Or is this just the standard Intel = Big Company = Bad type of reaction???

You should have been a bit impressed that a company as large as Intel was actually able to do a bit of investigation... Let's see, employee with access to confidential material has quit to go to work for the competition. Maybe we should see what files he has accessed and when to make sure everything is on the up and up... Oh! Look here! He had no reason to access all these highly confidential files, especially only a couple of weeks before his last day...

Geoff,

I haven't see ANYONE, ANYWHERE accuse AMD of anything. In fact, most stores on this case go to great lengths (or, lengths at least) to mention that there is NO evidence that AMD knew anything about this. They had hired the guy, but that is all.

Believe it or not, but most companies (at least in the US) TEND to work together when it comes to trade secrets. Remember Coke - Pepsi? There has been at least one case where one of the companies was approached by someone with the secret recipe of there competitor.

Did they buy it? No. Instead, they notified the authorities and helped setup a sting operation to bust the guy (who turned out to be an executive of the other company that DID have access to the recipe).

Believe it or not, but AMD and Intel have worked together similarly in the past. No one wants to hire someone that is willing to rip off their former employer. Especially given the consequences if they are caught.

@J-Wick

"A lot of rumours were flying round about conditions in the football stadium in New Orleans - murders, rapes and so on. They were reported on the news, but were never confirmed or substaniated."

All of the things going on in the stadium were being done BY NO residents TO NO residents. The rest of the US had nothing to do with that one way or the other. Ian's original post implied all kinds of terrible things that the country did TO NO.

"Sure, there were guns & looting, but there were also bodies floating in the water & countless dead. Seems like the scale of devastation after Katrina compared to the more recent floods was an order of magnitude different."

Here is the problem with NO: It sits BELOW sea level. Normally, when a place floods due to storm surge, the surge runs back out to sea taking the water with it. In NO, it filled up the hole and didn't go anywhere until systems could be repaired to PUMP the water out.

So yes, as soon as the waters breached the levies, NO was doomed. And the devastation WAS much worse than what you would EVER expect from some water coming in one of the levies.

As for the bodies, well, even with the national guard there, they had limited (relative to the size of the disaster) resources and those resources were mostly tasked with trying to take care of the living. The dead can, and had to wait.

"Lots of stories about the behaviour of the Katrina 'refugees' when they arrived in neighbouring states. I'm gonna stick my neck out & say that it seemed to me that there was a lot of 'lazy blacks' versus 'hardworking whites' behind that. And course there was the whole 'finding' versus 'looting' distinction too:"

Check the crime statistics for Houston Texas. That is a large city and yet 100,000 NO refugees were able to significantly increase crime in many categories. As for the whole white vs. black thing, while it gets bandied about on the news all the time, MOST Americans really don't care about skin color. The few that do SURE do make it look like the USA is nothing but a bunch of racists though. At least on the main stream news.

As for me, I happen to have several black friends. Or more to the point, I happen to have several good friends that HAPPEN to be black. I also happen to have several good friends that HAPPEN to Hispanic. Heck, I have a few good friends that HAPPEN to be Mexican immigrants. Like most people in the USA, I really don't care what color a man's (or woman's) skin is. I'm FAR more interested in the color of their soul. (that would roughly translate to "character" for the atheists out there)

The Apollo series

weight approximately 2,000 tons MORE than the shuttle does at lift off. So we are talking about an increase of 1,000 tons over the Apollo.

Of course, this IS a different NASA these days. Back in the day, it was a bunch of kids (average age of 27 at one point) and a few PHDs. Now, it is a bunch of bureaucrats (who are PHDs) and a handful of engineers.

If Apollo 13 happened today, the crew would be dead before the ground team could even identify the chair of the committee that was going to investigate the REPORT of the problem.

@Mickey Porkpies

Amen.

The government schools (aka: "public schools") in the US are a complete and utter joke. Hell, their goal isn't even about educating the kids, it's about securing jobs for all the teachers and administrators. The current high school graduates wouldn't have been able to get out of the SEVENTH GRADE just 30 years ago.

Yet we keep pouring money into this monster.

Answer me this: With over $200,000 in a class room of only 20 kids (In my state, we pay almost $10,000 per kid per year), how in the world could you NOT put together a good education system and manage to get those kids educated? And actually have money left for things like paper. And pencils.

But the government schools can't teach those kids for that much money. And they won't be able to teach them on ANY amount of money.

It's time to dissolve the Federal education boards, the state education boards, etc. all the way down to the local school level. Let the school boards decide how to run the schools and let THEM be directly responsible to the parents.

Of course, it will never happy. The US (and most of the developed world it seems) is way too stuck on "government knows best".

Based on the test scores, you can't prove it to me.

@Charles

"by reducing the amount of material the current needs to pass through (reducing heat generated through resistance)"

That is just a little bit backwards. Decreasing LENGTH of the lines would indeed decrease resistance. But the decrease in width and thickness (also part of that die shrink) will very much INCREASE resistance and INCREASE heat output, IF they keep the same voltage. Why do you think operating voltages of these things have dropped from 3.3V down to just one volt now?

In this case, the decrease in area (width x height) of the assorted elements more than offsets the linear decrease length.

And there is a WHOLE lot more to a new process than just transistor widths. Power consumption is going to be driven far more strongly by gate leakage and clock frequency that by simple resistance.

Heck, that is one reason the original Pentium 4 never made it that far: the .13 micron process SUCKED at gate leakage and they never could fix it. That leakage wasn't truely "fixed" until the 65nm process and it was greatly improved upon with the 45nm process.

So, just because AMD has a 45nm process, it doesn't automatically mean it will allow them to make lower TDP parts.

I hope they DO get it right though. Intel tends to become VERY complacent when they don't have a competitor nipping on their heels (or even passing them up like during the P4 days!)

@Toidi

Uhm. No. "All the graphs are valid" is complete bull shit. Some of them MAY be doing it correct and actually getting a number that is CLOSE to the truth (in case you have been sucked up in the AGW debate for too long, the "truth" is actually a way of saying what is actually going on versus what people think (or more often) HOPE is going on).

Those are the valid graphs.

All the other that are far off into "left field" (baseball term), are NOT valid! The results they are publishing are NOT close to the "truth", therefore they CAN'T be valid. Remember the old programing axiom: Garbage in, garbage out.

@Mr Mouse

"But at university, accepting any view as incontrovertably accurate should never be allowed."

Does this include the current favorite religion of AGW????

@AC

"I liked Y2K... Much panic... Much $$$ (Well £££)"

I didn't. You had NO IDEA how disappointed I was when not one single system went down. Hell, my lights didn't even so much as FLICKER!

How dare they get us all worked up expecting a great show and then deliver NOTHING!

Bastards.

@Everyone...

It is strange to see SO many people talk about the oil companies and how much POWER they have to manipulate the oil/gas prices. If this is actually true, then explain ONE THING to me:

Why in the HELL didn't they USE this power back in the 1980's when oil was around $10/barrel and they were going broke????

I lived in an oil town during that time. It was no picnic for ANYONE working in the oil industry (or in an oil town) during those times. That went on for a couple of decades until the recent spike in oil prices brought things back to life in these oil towns.

Of course, the true answer (and the one a lot of folks don't want to actually talk about) is that they DON'T have this magical ability to control oil prices. The global oil market does that. And as large as each oil company is, there are WAY too many of these huge oil companies playing in the global market for a few of them to actually "manage" the oil prices.

@John

Have you ever seen a large wind farm? There is a large farm about 20 miles off the road between Santa Rosa and Fort Sumner (New Mexico, USA). Twenty freaking miles away (aka: 32km for the Imperially challenged) this forest of white "sticks" out there is just plain ugly.

You are in country with fairly little development (mostly graising land and open prairie) and just not much man made other than the road you are driving on. And then out there there at the edge of the mesa is this blight that stretches for MILES. Talk about an EYE SORE!

Of course, they have finished up a new wind farm about 20 miles West of Santa Rosa that is only about 10 miles (16 km...) off the road. Thankfully, it is only a blight for about 10 miles because there are enough hills around there to block the view of the think when you are West and East of it, other than that 10 mile stretch of road.

Personally, I would MUCH rather see a GW class nuclear plant out there instead of that wind farm.

@kevin

Convection and conduction are only TWO of the three methods of heat rejection. The third one, radiation, works just fine in space, as evidenced every single day when the sun "rises" over the horizon and you feel the radiation warm your face.

Hell, I don't like flying WITHIN the US anymore

I almost cried when they pushed through the whole DHS BS right after the attack. They had a problem with too much red tape and dumb ass public officials getting in the way of "the job" and their solution? Add ANOTHER layer of red tape and dumb ass public officials to the mess.

Oh, and while we are at it, lets go ahead and ignore a few of those pesky Constitutional protections while everyone is scared and easily herded. No law abiding citizen has anything to hide, so let's go ahead and basically strip search everyone that wants to fly on public transportation. The 4th Amendment be damned!

As Benjamin Franklin once said: "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."

The Lord knows we didn't trade freedom for security. We simply discarded a significant portion of freedom for nothing. And many of the fools in the country cheered for it.

@coward

And you seem to forget that it was the UK and France that directly caused WWII by the way they treated Germany after WWI. The fact that the average US citizen was sick of spending our blood and money to keep Europe from killing each other is fairly understandable. The toll in WWI was pretty high.

And what exactly did the US do to cause WWI? Oh, wait! We didn't have a damn thing to do with it.

And after we DID finish WWI for you, you set Germany up so that the average German citizen would be willing to drink the blood of any UK or French child. Of course, they might have to just to stay alive... Don't forget how your "enlightened" European leaders basically polished Hitler's knob until he was ready to try and take on the world.

So yes, we stayed out of YOUR fucking mess until the Japanese were stupid enough to directly attack the USA. What a surprise.

I find it amusing when I see the very same people that are pissing and moaning that the US didn't intervene in WWII soon enough are also the same people that keep saying we had no right to intervene in Iraq.

If I was in charge here, most of you would be initially much happier. I would embark on a program to make the US totally energy independent, close all of our overseas military bases and pull our people and hardware back home. Then I would set out to build the best missile defense possible.

The US would be at home minding our own business and the rest of you could take care of your own shit. Or roll around in it if that is what you wanted to do.

I would be sueing the company that cracked it

The Air Force might be immune. But the company that actually cracked it ISN'T. They violated several Federal laws and are wide open to a suite.

what ever...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

How did this ever get translated to "every nutjob can buy themselves a firearm", personally I see it as "if you're part of a militia (one that's well regulated) you can bear arms". Admittedly, this was overruled in 2008 in favour of "here, have a gun".

It always amazes me when people read the second amendment and totally overlook two very important things:

1) The "Bill of Rights" (aka: first 10 amendments) was completely about the RIGHTS of INDIVIDUALS. There isn't one single amendment in there that guarantees a right to any level of government. Period.

2) Did you even READ the second part of that amendment??? "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." THE RIGHT of the PEOPLE to KEEP and BEAR arms shall NOT be INFRINGED. Is that so very hard to read? Pull up your dictionary (an old hardback please) and look up "infringed" if you REALLY want to get the pulse up.

Do just a TINY bit of research on the debates the founding fathers had while preparing the Bill of Rights.

Hell, most of the debate was around "Hell, EVERYONE knows these are basic rights given by GOD. If we put them into the Constitution, some DUMB ASS 200 years from now will actually decide that WE gave them those rights and then try to limit them!"

It still amazes me how many people can read the Constitution and then selectively translate it to mean what they want. The read the 1st amendment and some how translate that into banning God from everything (along with creating the whole "separation of Church and State", a phrase that appears NO WHERE in the Constitution in any form!) as well as somehow create a right to privacy that is then used to allow pretty much anything these people want to do. At the same time, these same folks are completely able to totally IGNORE the 10th amendment (powers reserved for the States and people) while creating Federal bureaucracies that have NO possible allowance in the Constitution.

I'll be the first one to admit that there are things in the Constitution I don't like. I personally feel the 17th amendment (Senators are directly elected by the populace instead of being appointed by the States) was the single biggest mistake this country ever made. But I don't go around and try to convince other people that it doesn't mean what it says! Too bad the left isn't so liberal in there own attitudes and understanding of the Constitution.

RE: So DDT wasn't bad?

DDT wasn't bad. The gross over application of DDT was bad. And even then it wasn't nearly as bad as the environmentalists and the media would have you think. That stuff is VERY effective in what it does and it really doesn't take much to work wonders.

It's kind of strange to see the exact same FUD that was applied to DDT being used today against CO2.

Something never change.

What's REALLY going on...

I've seen the secrete papers. What they REALLY plan on doing is forcing all of you to get a GPS tracking system installed in your bum. Any time you move faster than 5 mph, the presumed top speed of a person with GPS receiver in his/her arse, you will get billed for it.

They still haven't worked out how to deal with false charges caused by excessively powerful bowel movements, but they are diligently researching this slippery problem!

Well, I DO know I can't spell...

It was subconscious. I'm actually telepathic. (and occasionally telepathetic!)

See how good I am????

If you want to know about YOU, send me a check for $100 (scratch that! Make that 100 Euros!) and I'll get back to you!

I'm with you Steve!

"Personally, I think the bull-fighting should be allowed as long as it's one on one - get rid of the guys who half kill the bull before-hand. If you want to pick a fight now, then good luck to you."

I would LOVE to see on of those guys go head to head with a pissed off bull that DIDN'T have all the swords and spikes stuck in his back. If the bull could swing his head side to side like normal, it would be over in seconds.

If she admits she is to blame...

does that mean she will find herself in contempt of court???

The fact that she was STUPID enough to email something like that to her home computer should be an automatic disbarment for her.

Idiot.

@Christoph

Only if the electronic watch dog timer is still running. Here's a test for you:

1) reach back and find the power cord on your computer. You know, the one between the wall socket (or UPS) and the back of the power supply in your computer.

2) Yank it out.

3) Type in "format c: <RTN>"

4) Plug that power cord back in.

5) Reboot computer

6) Verify that your C: drive was formated.

7) If not, type in "format c: <RTN>"

Brother...

@Anonymous Coward

Actually, all they are trying to do is destroy the Top Secret computer technology that is on the Apollo 11 lander. They don't want the Chinese to get it and use the information to build there own moon lander.

Or, they are pissed that Directv raised their rates again, so they are going for the 101 sat!

Not a bad idea

This works for me. If I get a 404 when typing in a URL, my next step is almost 100% of the time Google anyway! This just saves me a step.

Plus, I would MUCH rather get a suggestion from Google on what the correct web address is than some stupid 404 advert website from Verisign.

Of course, it actually doesn't because I don't use Google's (or anyone else's) toolbar in my browsers. Nice idea though.

Amazing...

How many idiots post here...

A few things to ponder:

1) Does the US have the technology to produce all of it's electricity carbon free? Yes! We've had it for the last 60 years. It's called nuclear power.

2) Does large scale wind power farms FUCK up the view of nature? Yes! There is one about 20 miles off one of the highways I travel. Thirty miles of wind turbines make power lines look positively insignificant. And pretty.

3) Why does the US insist on (trying to) use corn for ethanol? Because the land here is VERY suited to growing corn, but not very suited at all for growing sugar. Why do you think places like Brazil are known for sugar exports, but not the US?

4) Is using the primary food crop for the WORLD to make fuel a good idea??? Uhm, NO! The primary impact won't be felt in the US. It will be felt in all those countries that import US food stuffs (look it up. There are a LOT of them). It's not nice, but it is true: The US will still have all the food they need. The rest of the world will suffer though. Dependency on oil sucks. Dependency on basic food stuffs is REALLY bad.

5) Should the US invest in more non carbon based energy production? Of course! The real bitch is developing alternative systems that are actually cost effective. As the price of oil goes up, there will be more and more cost effective solutions out there. Not to mention, as the alternative systems mature, they will become more and more cost effective in there own right. The transition WILL happen. It's just a question of time. Some of us think a free market will time it better than a government mandate. Of course, some of use have actually looked at the majority of government programs that were an abject failure and recognized them for what they are.

Ok...

"Even something as simple as a few pounds of explosive strapped to the outside so that it explodes during reentry............."

You haven't set off many high explosives, have you? They have to be set off with a detonator that initiates a supersonic shock wave through the material. The heat from reentry would just cause it to burn. A friend of mine used to reheat MREs (or what ever they were call then) with small pieces of C4. It worked better than the sterno cans.

"If it's an advanced inteligence sat in low orbit, which they say it is, then it need s hell of a power plant to run, which they catagoricially refuse to admit is nuclear based."

So is this huge power requirement because it is an advanced sat or because it is in low earth orbit? Low earth orbit means they have to have a lot FUEL because the drag will cause them to slow down and they will have to boost the orbit a LOT more often than something like a GPS sat in their 12 hour orbit.

Current generation solar cells can easily (if not cheaply) provide all the power these birds need. It's not like they have the atmosphere to absorb energy from the sun before it hits the panel. The only reason you would need to a something like a thermic battery for power was if you were concerned about anti-sat technology and were trying to create a "stealth" spy sat that the "enemy" couldn't track. But the fact that it is an advance spy sat or the fact that it is low earth orbit doesn't really play into this much.

And for all the responses about self destructs, well, the bird isn't talking. Nor is it listening. That's the root of the problem. If they could talk to it, then maybe they COULD set off a self destruct. Of course, if they could talk to it, then they could have it maneuver into a high speed dive into the ocean so they would need a self destruct.

Of course, if they could talk to it in the first place, they wouldn't need to destroy it anyway.