Actually, I voted never for a combination of reasons, but more for political than technical ones. I do believe, as others stated, that the economic thermodynamic equation is against this, and I don't believe that's going to change. The thing with people who believe in cheap fusion is, they think that figuring out how to *generate* the energy is the hard part. They haven't thought of the fact that all energy dissipates as heat eventually. The real trick with using massive amounts of energy within the earth's atmosphere is figuring out what to do with it after you've done the work you wanted to do.

But, the bigger reason is political: Because the question contained the word "we". Scientists may indeed make an airborne vehicle for personal / small group use. But *I* won't be part of this "we" that gets to use it. It will be affordable only the world's richest. I don't see how they will have any reason to ensure the rest of us have the ability to travel long distances so quickly. Consider that the automobile and the airplane have been around for roughly the same amount of time. Why don't we all have our own private jets?

Thank you for saying this! You're exactly right: A GUI only sysadmin is like a tone-deaf recording engineer. Sure, their face doesn't go on the cover of the album, but if they don't understand what they're handling, they can wreck the entire product.

> All these root operators that have only one site need a good swift kick...

Alright, anonymous coward, I nominate YOU to be the one to go and give the US Army a "good swift kick". See ya when you get back!

Hmmm... maybe we should ask Mr. Gathered Mass why he keeps changing his mind. Oh, what's that? You're talking about millions of *different* people holding *different* opinions? Wow, who would've thought! I think you've found the real story in all of this: apparently, not everybody feels the exact same way about different, although similar, events. Thanks for sharing this insight - you just blew my mind.

Hey Mods! I'm getting modded funny here, but I'm not kidding - I still can't check my email and this is frustrating, not funny at all. I didn't feel like gogling this for my original post, but to make this one worthwhile, I present Exhibit A: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=392

Ironically, I came to read the comments here while waiting for my webmail to load. By the time I finished reading these comments, the spinner on my other tab had stopped. The result?

Request Timed Out. ...
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3607; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3614

The parent is right. I try not to get involved in platform wars, but the same hardware running windows + mssql + iis + asp.net simply cannot keep up with any *nix + mysql + apache + php stack. Not to mention the security vulnerabilities. The only reason msft products are as popular as they are is because msft spent decades perfecting a business model that involved cultivating relationships with consultants and resellers who would do *whatever it takes* to convince their customer to buy a msft solution. Second biggest reason for their success was enterprise purchasing policies whereby the company would rather buy the crap they knew than take a risk on an unknown. Third was msft purchasing products that actually were well-made (and eventually turning them into pulp - even Excel is starting to go that way).

During that same time, a New Zealand engineer developed a home-made cruise missile using off-the-shelf parts, a Scottish rocket club built a flying waverider airframe, the Swedish navy were designing stealth ships that were invisible to Radar and nuclear weapons research continued unabated in the Indian subcontinent.

Wow, to hear you tell the story, I'd say ITAR is doing a great job at driving innovation. I say keep it in place! Of course, I'm not american, either.

All kidding aside, I think it would be helpful to americans if they could distinguish between what helps their country and what helps certain powerful interests in their country. I don't see much evidence that many of you folk can.

As a member of my school's logo team from grades 5 through 7, I wanted to thank you for bringing back some really fond memories. They only taught it for one week in class, but for those of us who kept playing with it outside the classroom, it taught so many skills - and things like geo-spatial visualization are valuable outside of strict IT.

Even if they updated the code, though, I don't think many computers these days have a cassette deck for loading the program anyway. :P

I have to wonder if the founders of google have spent most of the last decade having laughing fits over their motto, which makes a promise through negation of a subjective term.

What does that even mean? Oh, they're going to thump their chests toward China? (admittedly, that's more than most western governments are willing to do these days, but I digress...)

What about the company's mission statement:

Well, it would be difficult to argue the case that this is, in and of itself, evil, but when you consider what "the world's information" encompases, and what controlling that means, it's hard to think otherwise.

Now, a little more on topic, it's clear that google's amassed an army of lawyers and PR Flacks to rival their army of programmers. Makes me wonder whether their business model / management style is just to ensure they are the employer for all the world's language masters - be it natural or artificial. But, hey - free webmail!

The part of the picture which I think you're missing is this: the copies may be missing information that the originals contain. This is certainly the case if WikiLeaks is editing them (redacting text) before releasing them. If the files have been tampered with, they may not be admissible as evidence in a court, or they may not be as compelling to a jury, even if they are. There are legal standards for admitting digital evidence, and then there are the forensic experts, of course. Telling a court, "here's a file I downloaded from bittorrent, and it looks pretty legit" isn't going to cut it. If the pentagon manages to get the originals back, they might just save Cheney, Powell, Rice, Bush, Wolfowitz, etc. from a public hanging.

Quick Julian! Get a copy of those files over to The Hague ASAP. Then you can hand back the originals to avoid the full force of the US government coming at you. Don't worry - the statute of limitations for war crimes never expires. If there is justice in this world, everyone who's touched the US's dirty wars - from Colin Powell to Barack Obama, will be imprisoned for life (or worse - I'm looking at you Herr Cheney!).

As far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest news of my week. Bigger than Old Spice guy. Bigger than jive. I support the GPL and the developers of WordPress, but I also feel some sympathy for those who want to get paid to come up with beautiful styles for WordPress blogs. I think Mark's post addresses that pretty well, though.

What I'm wondering, though, is this: do WP theme developers such as the Thesis folks have any other protection for their product? That is, can they argue that their code is GPL, but the visual result is something they own the copyright on? Or, can the resulting aesthetic effect be looked at as an unregistered trademark, which only the creator can license for re-use, regardless of whether the html / css / js code is freely redistributable under the GPL?

Anyone get what I mean? Bruce, you there? ;)