With RNG I was using a short name for "Random Number Generator". I didn't meant a LFSR ;-)

You could initialize the hardware RNG and a software (open code, verified by whoever is interested) implementation of the same algorithm with the same seed and compare if the first millions or billions of generated numbers were the same. Reseed and redo this a certain number of times and you statistically can reduce the probability of evil-non-randomness to (near) zero.

Of course, the existence of a programmed or delayed-opening backdoor of any sort in the chip would break this procedure...

Just two more scenarios, such as deploying balloons to set up communication channels over Philippines' islands recently devastated by the Haiyan typhoon... Were these uses also patented, or are they still open to comm-balloon business?

Certainly these are not music festivals or sports events :-(

Is this comment related by any means with the post "Are SARS statistics really true?" Where the is the "anti-science"stuff? Are the reported facts lies? How do the stars and rooftops line fit the Plot? I'm really out of the game here...

By chance, a few weeks ago I saw a documentary about SARS in China.

Remember that the 2008 Olympics were to be in Beijing, and so Chinese authorities in 2002 tried everything to avoid inflicting any tiny bit of fear in the tourists coming to China. They tried at first to admit there was an epidemics, and along the way declared many SARS fatalities as due to other causes. The things become more transparent (i.e. the official numbers were more realistic) when the medical community all over the country began to put a strong pressure. Many doctors were victims because when SARS started the hospitals didn't have equipment to protect them conveniently. But today no one really can tell the "true" number of SARS victims (and also of infected people) in China, and that biases the global SARS statistics, of course.

But the documentary was not about the deaths: it was about the survivors that have been treated in hospitals. In fact, the standard treatment was to deploy huge amounts of cortisone in the infected and that, AFAIR, stops blood flow in bones (among other secondary effects) and so many bone parts died in the patients in the forthcoming months and years. Some people have already gone into surgery many times (up to a dozen or so, in some cases) to patch those dead bones and other injuries in joints, many are in wheelchairs and in some cases they are sorts of abandoned by family and authorities. Some have already died, or even committed suicide.

It was said that the "cortisone" treatment was in China only, other countries (such as Canada, which had a bunch of deaths) didn't follow those medical guidelines.

Couldn't google the documentary name but just found an article about the issue: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/07/content_9276884.htm

Final words: many survivors are still severely crippled from SARS. For them the SARS epidemics didn't end in a few months. And local medical practices still make a strong impact in the quality of life of the patients.

I understand that risk vs. interest balancing.

In fact this is clearly a positive feedback example: instead of trying to keep the chicken (Portugal) alive and delivering 1 egg each day for many years (reasonable interest rate), "good economy practices" instead dictate to get 7 eggs a day by using brute force for a couple of weeks, without worrying with chicken's ass destruction - followed by the wipe-out of the whole chicken.

It is like if a doctor who sees a patient suffering from cancer says: lets kill this guy right now because in this way he/she will not (eventually) die of cancer.

There's no mercy in this world for the weak (or those countries with stupid governance, which are most), at least under this nice "global economy"...

I'm a Portuguese, and we are paying here > 7% ïnterest on the money lent by Germans and others (USA banks surely) via IMF, BCE etc, while they are getting that money from BCE at 1% rate or so. So, strictly speaking perhaps they are saving us Portuguese suckers from ourselves (I don't speak in the name of Spanish and Greek people) but simultaneously they are leaches sucking our blood from us.

BTW I think Japan has one of the largest 'per capita' public debt in the world, but since it is mostly owned by national banks and citizens, "it stays at home" and there's not a strong international pressure on it (via USA rating agencies who performed miserably in the bank crisis 5 yrs ago).

Do your beloved academic friend a prank: ask him/her to review the paper without a previous warning about the scam and see the outcome :-)

Googling "Ice Ages coincide with the passage of the Solar System through the spiral arms of our galaxy" retrieves you a lot of links. See for instance the first lines of these two:

http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/ShavivChapter.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0906/0906.2777.pdf (2009)

Many more there, such as this on dinosaur extinction:

http://www.dinosaurhome.com/root-causes-of-extinction-events-219.html