As an owner of a plot of land in one of the cities mentioned as beneficiaries, the article made my day... That ought to take care of my retirement fund :-).

During my latest 64-bit Mandriva Linux upgrade, I accidentally nuked the previous 64-bit plugin beta version, and I was dismayed to find Adobe no longer provided it on their site. After this /. article I rushed to the site to grab it just in case some corporate strategist makes it unavailable again... Works fine with Mandriva 2010.1 on Pentium D @3.2Ghz (don't laugh, I got the board cheap and the performance is more than adequate for my needs). Much better than the 32-bit plugin version with nspluginwrapper. Not sure if I should thank them or not, though. Giving something, then capriciously taking it away, then giving it again would be bad behaviour in a real human.

"Half-assed hologram taken"? I wonder if you have seen a real, well-made hologram of a person? They are spooky in their combination of 3D, extremely high resolution (almost infinite, in fact) and absence of motion and color. Nothing else is like them ("death masks", casts of a deceased persons faces, might come closest).

You are probably right, but it still does not answer the question. The lump of lead is still much cheaper, so there has to be a good justification for using funds on the gold and platinum, instead of more or better instrumentation, more propellant, or other such costs of the project.

(There is also a PR angle: the use of such classic luxury materials sounds extravagant to taxpayers...)

Wouldn't a lump of lead work as well and be cheaper?

Suppose for very important standards, the governement (probably would have to be several, " a coalition of the willing") would buy all patents relating to it, and freeing them as far as said standard is concerned (costly, but less so than a minor war, for example).

There is precedent: Daguerrotype and the French governement. From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype)
Instead of Daguerre obtaining a French patent, the French government provided a pension for him.[6] In Britain, Miles Berry, acting on Daguerre's behalf, obtained a patent for the daguerreotype process on August 14, 1839. Almost simultaneously, on August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift “Free to the World.”

If what you say is true, my interest in Blu-ray dropped to zero. It means the format is useless for storing user-generated HD content so that it can be conveniently played back by off-the-shelf consumer equipment, like DVD does for SD content. In other words, kills the use-case of sending clips of grandchildren playing to grannies, in a format they can play conveniently. Or an amateur theatre group filming and distributing their show?

Am I missing something? Sony cannot be that stupid? Do they really want Blu-ray to be authored by serious professionals only?

After a few rounds by Microsoft lobbyists, the required language switches from Python to Visual Basic

yet it's just now climbing out of a third world status that it's been in for centuries.

But just barely for 2 centuries. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, Chinese technology and culture was way ahead of Europe. This is why there still is mystique about Eastern wisdom. Civilizations rise and fall, then rise again, it is not a linear progression upwards.

"the reaction mass is pre-ionized"

I wonder how they manage that? Isn't it equivalent to carrying a very large electric charge and somehow keeping it from getting neutralized? Same problem as in large capacitors. If they have tech to do that, wouldn't it be a wonderful electricity storage system!

The way things are going, all significant airports will be requiring scanning a few years from now. They are arguing about it at the EU level right now, with some politicians still voicing privacy concerns, but I expect they will be overridden, especially if yet another terrorist incident occurs on some flight. So either you submit to scanning, or don't fly.

Wonder if this, combined with rising fuel costs and carbon footprint concerns, will result in a world where civilian passenger flights are an expensive rarity. Would transatlantic passenger ships come back?

Thanks. That's a relief. Makes the new Intel CPU a reasonable prospect when I next need to update my home box (now with Pentium Duo + ATI 9200). I'm not a big user of 3D apps, but I like to fly with the Google Earth occasionally, and the kid needs some games...