I work in this industry.

An RTO is a Regional Transmission Operator. RTOs are responsible for maintaining and operating the buik grid (wholesale level). RTOs schedule generators to run based on demand and market conditions.

Burning jet fuel, by the way, is not unconventional. It is just undesirable because of the cost. Quite often, the gas turbine generators can also be run on natural gas or on a mixture of the two fuels. It is preferable, however, to have other types of generators carrying as much of the load as possible -- steam turbines, for instance, produce much more output for the same fuel input, but can't be started/stopped quickly.

I will also put in my vote for DirectNIC. Their domains are a little pricier than, say, GoDaddy, but after seeing how they weathered Hurricane Katrina (with their data centre located in New Orleans), I was hooked. Their disaster survival went way above and beyond.

Except now all you have is a ratio of two masses, rather than an absolute quantity. What exactly would you balance the kilogram reference against?

You would use it to callibrate another mass as being a kilogram. I know this is kind of a circular problem, but that's really why the fluctuating mass is troubling, because that's supposed to be the stable benchmark, and it has proven not to be so stable.

So if it weighs the same as a duck . . .

Can we do better with the technologies at hand right now?

Um . . . didn't we just do that? Isn't that what the article is about?

Or do you have another method involved for determining the mass of an object used as the constant for measuring mass?

Placing two masses on a balance is the usual method . . . . and it is gravity-independent. Gravity is necessary, of course, but it only needs to be constant across the two platters of the balance.

Thanks for the validation. Too often, participants on /. tend to forget that they're dealing with human beings who sometimes make mistakes.

It appears nobody has considered this marvellously simple approach:

Hit "reply". Type four words: "This is not me." Hit send.

This extends the courtesy to the misdirector of the email of letting them know that they've got bad info.

Agreed. Ford can say they won't supply it, but they've just made a public statement that they have discoverable records.

Or skipping work because they're babies.

Says the baby who is an anonymous coward . . . .

OMG! We're all going to die!

Well, eventually, yes . . . but most of us not today.

Yeah, probably.

They kept telling people "We are from France" as their cover story . . . .

Yeah, that's not really good enough. You need to go to at least quintuple for ROT26 to display any security.

Berkshire Hathaway was once a textile manufacturer. That has nothing to do with their present business.