What are the odds that two advanced SSBN submarines would collide in a vast ocean accidentally ? There are rumors that US and Russian subs collided frequently during the cold wars because of the close proximity when they tracked each other and these incidents were usually silenced for political reasons. perhaps something else is going on ? One of the captains decided to be a smart ass ?

If this isn't the manifestation of greed, I don't know what is. However, some Linux distros should be able to use this to captialize in the netbook market and increase their share.

Most of them agree about anthropogenic climate change. Very few disagree based on scientific merits. Of course you could dig up those anti-climate change petitions signed by economists and fields not related to climate science. But thats up to you

Although its good that certain distribution cater for different markets, the problem is the over saturation of one area with too many choices.

Yeah over priced netbook.

It is not just a technological problem. It is both a social and technological problem and technology itself can not address the randomness of human minds (stupidity, over confidence or ignorance etc). Scammers will always find a way around technology and other approaches have to be considered. I don't consider informing the public as a petty trick, this is something that is being used in real life and should be considered as a viable option.

Let me get this, this kid probably have some kind of anger problem, he manage to get a gun, he is 17 and still have problem distinguishing reality but lets focus on a video game.

I don't see what the big deal is. NASA and DoD have worked togeather before (Shuttle program but DoD dropped out for non-manned launches). This is not about militarization of NASA (DoD's space budget is significantly more than NASA), if it's cheaper for NASA to adopt or modify one of the heavy launchers used by the DoD, than why not ? What raised my eye brow was Griffin's response about NASA's inability to evaluate rocket options ....

Maybe its my cynicism but using monetary rewards to encourage contribution (however it may be regulated) will only encourage users to find ways to exploit the system.

pfft, common sense or logic is no match for Senator Conroy or the Australian Government

I've had experience with regulations and biomed industries, not just the FDA, but european etc etc. Theres a reason why companies have to do all these regulation and testing for medical devices, the more intrusive or critical the device it is, the more testing and verification is needed. (Not that it ever catches every single bug or design flaw) but a safety mechanism is needed (for recall, tracking manufacturing, design etc etc) and to show that the these company have at least taken common problems into considerations. I have no doubt there is probably some red tapes in all the regulation agency, but there is a reason why critical medical devices cost so much. This isn't some FDA or CE conspiracy to jack up the price (at least most of it).

Thats because the stringent testing that is required for medical devices. If we're talking about devices that doesn't play any pivotal role in medical treatment, it often doesn't require the verification and stringent testing and would cost significantly less(alot of the cost for devices are on clinical tests). Imagine if you use a off the shelf monitor for a multi-million dollar imaging machine, and it failed to display a small cancerous anomaly correctly ...
This article doesn't really say anything about the current state of medical devices, it just simply costs alot to build and verify they work in an acceptable manner for medical purposes. I don't think the machines talked about in these article will ever be adopted in the west. I doubt the reliability of these components will be up to scratch compare to the regular prenatal care machines BUT for third world countries where the medicial facilities are so poor, its probably worthy to think about adopting these machines as a temporary stop gap and thats probably the point of this exercise.

I take it Atheism would be binary ... quickly hides

The point is that the fabric of US democracy lies on the will of these electors. and Obama is one less procedure away from being president.

My impression of WoW is that it is a fairly shallow game in terms of narrative with the quests. Most of these quests are simple grinding with very little aspect to rewards or consequences to the players actions. If the idea is to incoporate consequences or rewards to such things as torture, part of the gaming mechanism would've to be changed such that something valuable to a WoW player would be affected. I don't think WoW has ever presented the concept of good or bad in the gameplay, either faction can do pretty much whatever they want regardless. WoW isn't designed to disucss morality in terms of gameplay.