The text is warped and obfuscated. Look at example captchas -- do you really think the geometric swirls were in the source documents?

Oh get off it. You're just being a contrary to the point of hyperbole. And you're completely wrong.
Go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone
"This rate of energy release is equivalent to 70 times the world energy consumption of humans and 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity, or to exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes."

Wikipedia also says that all nuclear testing amounted to 510 megatons of energy released.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield
I don't know how that related to all "all explosives ever detonated", but assuming that is the total, then it would take a hurricane ~1,000 minutes to match the energy. You were off by a factor of at minimum 1,000 with your hyperbole.

Now, disregarding that, you're simply wrong that we can't influence hurricanes. It's simple math. If the water 100m below the surface if 5 degrees cooler, and we clearly understand how every change in water surface temperature influences hurricane strength, you can easily calculate how much energy we need to expand to pump that water up and how long it will stay there before convecting back down, etc... You can come up with a straightforward figure for how many joules our fleet needs to expend, and judging by this patent, it's not an astronomical figure.

Stop spouting this whole "noble nature" myth. Humans got to be a successful, spacefaring civilization by engineering the hell out of our environment. Our water system, the land, etc. This is just the next step.

Indeed, the original article has been updated with an editor's note now to indicate that it does not apply to US citizens. The summary needs to be clarified.

This is an excellent suggestion. If you can pull the curtain aside and take the magic out of the world, it can help the person put things into perspective.

This is clearly a transitional measure, and not a concerted effort to hide communications from mandated records keeping procedures as Bush and Palin are accused of.

It shouldn't have just been denied an oral presentation, it should have been caught by the program committee and never reviewed. You can't read 3 sentences of that abstract without knowing that it's garbage.

Presumably someone DID review this and deny it an oral, but didn't follow up with the program committee to make sure it was pulled entirely.

I've never been to a conference which pity accepts papers. CVPR, a IEEE conference on computer vision, has a 25% acceptance rate for posters. I think this paper is quite an embarrassment to IEEE.

Good point, although the recruit-a-friend EXP bonus works even with free, trial accounts (which are capped at level 20) and ceases to work on any account at level 60.

So in total, you could argue that this is a shell game to make you pay for an experience bonus, but it's only going to matter for a level range that is perhaps 1/3rd or 1/4th of the leveling process.

I actually really enjoy the leveling process in WoW. I can't imagine how it used to be in EQ, where you would just camp one spot in a dungeon and repeatedly pull respawns.

50% extra experience gain = "Only Fluff Items"? Giving a player with more money a competitive advantage with the core gameplay mechanism is "Only Fluff Items"?

Blizzard rewards from Blizzcon, Collector's editions, or card games are "Only Fluff Items". This crosses a terrible line.

Exact same thing? I didn't complain about the vanity aspects of what Sony is selling, and I won't complain about it from Blizzard either.

The bonuses that Blizzard gives players from things like Blizzcon or Collector's editions don't change the gameplay at all. What Sony is selling is something that actually changes the gameplay and gives you an advantage over other players.

So, they're intentionally making the game a grindfest so that they make more money? How can anyone argue that isn't asinine? You buy the game, you pay a subscription fee, but it's only REALLY fun if you pay 10 dollars every 4 hours.