HSR is an investment to the post peak oil future. When Jet A1 fuel costs $5 per liter only the extremely wealthy can afford to travel by air. I hope you Americans are not counting on that, everybody is rich in future? :) Meanwhile the others (and you!) are landlocked either to low speed electric-hybrid cars or low speed trains, that is if you don't start building HSR now . The question here is that do you Americans want to continue your lifestyle of affordable travel after the fossil fuels are out of question, or do you want to isolate yourselves and remove the last of your competitive features: affordable movement of people and goods?


But then again - "Americans, yes they are that stupid".

What would happen if USA neglects building heterogeneous transport networks and stays on the current trend of fossil fuel automobiles and planes? It is not the end of the world after the oil gets too expensive for transportation. If only you can keep the agriculture running you will not starve and private enterprises will built HSR and electric induction roads very fast. The bad thing is that at that time the rest of the world have those and you are late, so very late that I am afraid someone else has the technological and political leadership in this world. As a North European I wouldn't like to see that happen. America(USA) means a lot to me and I want see you leading the world in the future too.

http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/es-en/lumia.php Hahahah! :) Now where is my Mitsubishi Pajero?

Yep too bad this is already buried too deep in Slashdot. As a Finn I am really astonished when I see the ignorance of some people here. Delusional people who refuse to research this themselves. Fisker decided to start production of Karma in Finland 2008. That was more than year before your DOE started selling its loan to them. George W. Bush was the president of USA when Fisker signed final assembly contract of Karma (13.11.2008).

Someone who knows nuclear physics should comment this:

Boron has a large cross section for neutron capture, graphite on the other hand is used as a neutron moderator. Is it possible that graphene-boron nitride is also the optimal neutron shielding material?

No, this is Laser FISSION! They use a pulsed laser to activate a gold-thorium plate where heated gold produces ultra high energy electrons, neutron and ANTIMATTER. This process split thorium atoms releasing simultaneously a lot of extra power and radiation. http://www.aip.org/png/html/lfission.htm

There is not a single source that I have seen which would verify that someone from Europe would have dumped toxic waste near or to the coast of Somalia.

Lets think this rationally for a moment:

Multiple sources confirm that Italian mafia buys ships, fills them with toxic waste and sinks them in the middle of Mediterranean sea

Why would anyone who gets their toxic waste from Europe and are good at "losing" ships at Mediterranean sail through Suez? That and the sea voyage through Red Sea and the return would cause a lot of extra cost.

We are talking 200km vs 4000km here. It is much easier to dispose a junk ship at Mediterranean and come back with speed boats which have enough range for that. This "they poisoned our land, we have RIGHT to pirate" is another lie from greens and other similar people who want to "understand" Somalias plight by placing guilt to Europeans, or anybody else than Somalis themselves.

When I read the Wikipedia article the first thing I thought was that it would be great way to hog resources from *other* spy agencies. Like MI6 and CIA. It makes a lot of sense financially, operating a station like UVB-76 is cheap in Russia! They are using Soviet-era transmitters and those are built to last. Most likely the operating costs of that station consist mainly the electricity and wages of couple technicians who maintain the equipment and the facility itself. Perhaps the electricity is free for military installations in Russia so all they have to do is to recycle some 40 year old spare parts and pay $15k per year for a couple of technicians. That would make UVB-76 operating costs less than $100k per year!

Let me guess what the other side is doing: it is more than likely that each "number station" has its own department in western spy agencies which employs at least ten people. I don't think that they are working with the beginners salary, most likely those men and women have a lot of experience and their wages are somewhere between $80k-$150k per year. The information they produce from that complete nonsense is still nonsense, yet it is also hogging resources when it is passed to the higher levels on their agencies. See the equation now? Every rouble that is spent keeping that station on air is converted directly to negative USD, Euro and Pound at the same time. There is no risk losing any agents or secrets and yet they know that some bright minds are completely tied on that nonsense, now what could be better way to literally *attack* other spy agencies?

Running a number station is a very effective way to employ the *other* side and bleed their resources from the real business that is going on that shadowy world of theirs.

I ordered it immediately after I saw the first picture. I have a nixie clock kit which has been laying half assembled for years. I haven't connected the tubes and I don't have a case for it. Now I get a complete kit where from I can copy some designs, what a bargain! Thank you LadyAda!

What would happen if you co-operate with the persons who are asking the encryption password but you mislead them by telling a non-working password? It is obvious that the encryption will not open but if you persist that the false password *is* correct how anyone could punish you?

"Sir, it is the password I have been using for last twelve years, I don't know why it doesn't work. Perhaps you have damaged the media when you transferred it and it is now unusable?"

I can not think a method how to tell if the statement above is true or false. Encryption doesn't open but the person is co-operating and trying to help with the investigation. Oh well, perhaps they will transfer you to a country where they can waterboard you, and crush your limbs. :)

It looks like that if you want to clog/DDOS the British police just do this:

1. Buy few hundreds of usb memory key chains.
2. Put some random data to all of them and label volumes as "Child porn" / "Al Qaida files" / "MI6 employee register" .
3. Collect some random names and addresses from phone books and make a "README.TXT" containing one identity to each drive.
4. Start "losing" them to internet cafes and other public places.
5. Profit... no, wait, just watch how people start disappearing. :)