Quote from TFA:

Approximately 40% of all Skype users that were online crashed, taking down around 30% of all supernodes. Clients that continued to be up and running, and clients that restarted the application had their network searches directed to the supernodes still running, leading to an overload of those. Since Skype has in place a protection when a supernode is overloaded, so it would not consume too much of a client’s system’s resources, the supernodes started to shutdown automatically one after another, leading to a generalized failure of the network.

So a failure of only 30% of supernodes brought the system down. They should have had a lot more redundancy in their network than they did. The outage was NOT due to some fluke. It was due to an inherently inadequate network.

I am in extremely strong agreement with your criticisms of google's search page. In fact, I did not previously have NoScript installed on my computer. I do now, specifically to get google to work properly--I was getting so irritated using google with js.

This should be mod'ed up!

Are you sure that Clinton lied under oath?

Clinton was asked, under oath, if he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton did not immediately answer the question, but instead asked what was meant by a "sexual relationship". He was told that a sexual relationship was a relationship where they had sexual intercourse. Clinton then said that he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

Clinton and Lewinsky had oral sex, but they did not have sexual intercourse. Clinton was slippery, but he does not seem to have lied.

Governments do not seem to mind that these measures do nothing. A recent example in the UK concerns the power of the police to search anyone on suspicion of terrorism. Last year, the police searched over 100,000 people that way. Those searches did not lead to any convictions or even charges. In fact, they didn't even lead to any ARRESTS for terrorism-related offenses.

Because most of the people being searched were Arab Muslims, the searches aggravated those people and thus might have increased the chance that they would assist in a future terrorist attack.

Full story in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/28/terrorism-police-stop-search-arrests

Governments are obviously using the security theater for something other than real security.

Here is a direct link to the actual story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)"
--it should have been in TFS.

Your first point seems to be an adhominem argument. I will not dignify it by saying more about it.

Regarding your last point, peer review is not intended to catch fraud; for some discussion, see e.g. here. The criminal justice system is for people who have committed criminal acts: committing fraud with taxpayers' money, as Mann has been alleged to have done, is such an act.

The Washington Post seem to be suggesting that the Attorney General does not understand the law. That is false, of course.

In a grant application, Michael Mann cited some of is his prior research papers that, it is alleged, Mann knew were bogus. In other words, Mann committed fraud in a grant application. That is a crime, as it obviously should be.

For details, read the Attorney General's letter to UVA.

The Attorney General's investigation is pursuant to the work of Michael Mann on the "hockey stick" graph (of temperatures over the last millennium). For a detailed presentation of the evidence that the work was probably bogus, see the book Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford. There is more than enough evidence to justify investigation of Mann's work. And the attempt by Mann's colleagues to cover up for one of their own is shameful.

For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Richard Lipton is one of the top researchers in theoretical computer science.

The Guardian is having a debate on Climategate this Wednesday. Leading protagonists from the two sides of the debate are on the panel. Details are at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/30/guardian-debate-climate-science-emails