Like 99%+ of people who read this, I have no idea what you are talking about. Care to give an example? You don't need to directly quote a document, but you will need to write enough details so someone who is an impartial observer (simply because he has no detailed knowledge of whatever's going on in there) can reach a conclusion.

Hmmm, how heavy? Like in "heavy metal" heavy? Like Uranium-heavy? No, couldn't be.... right?

Nothing to see here, move along:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952

It's probably an inevitable phase in development.

Clarke not a scientist? Since when? He might not have had a PhD title (which is only that - a title) but other than that trivial detail he's practically a text-book model of a fine scientist. He is one of *the* role models for the job.

It's like saying Carl Sagan wasn't a scientist! In fact, Clarke and Sagan had very similar fields of interest and work.

Of course it doesn't cost *nothing* but it costs very little - the water isn't free (people will splash out some water) and the chemicals to keep the water clean-ish isn't free (people will dirty the water). In fact, it costs exactly the same, per swimmer, as it does during the day and that is where the problem really is. In addition to that, if the word spreads you allow semi-illegal free night swimming, it is very reasonable that some of the people who would swim (and pay) during the day will choose to swim for free at night, bringing no income to you and only cost. And then on top of it all, if the number of night swimmers really increases, people might conclude that they are entitled to pool guards, working drink bars, etc., which would, even if possible, require hiring night staff which would probably cost more than day staff.

Personally, I don't think this can be "solved" or, really, that there is anything there to "solve". It is human nature to want things for free. It is probably a property of every living thing. The only practical option is to have some kinds of artificial rules that would guard a balance between total anarchy and total capitalism. Thus, most people choose some brand of doublethink - "stealing is bad, but I'm still a good person if I don't steal too much."

What is more expensive - all this bickering and lobbying or just simply having a 2/3rds referendum which will settle things for the next 10 years? A clean binary resolution will help both parties: if the "pro" people win - hooray, a golden age for stem cell research, if the "contra" people win - scientists and patients wanting to make use of the technology will simply find another country that wants them - they will have a clean and easy situation.

BTW the same goes for marijuana legalization - just hold the damn referendum already and get on with other things.

Or, since this is in USA, remove the federal choke on the topic and leave it to the individual states - there are worse things already at the state level (IIRC: minimum marrying age? drinking age?)

As this is as good a place for armchair philosophy as any, here's my take on it: I think both will probably be proven possible but not arbitrary - like wormholes of which the ends have to be positioned and opened "manually". For example, you can go FTL via a wormhole but first you need to carry the "other end" of the wormhole in a conventional way to wherever, and the same would work for time-based wormholes - you can time-travel but the "future" end of the wormhole will need to be "carried" to the future. The time-based wormhole would only be a single thing - not two things as would space-based wormholes be. This single opening would be "carried" to the future by simply existing for some duration. The analogy with space-based wormholes dictates that, as you can only travel between the portals to the wormhole and not, e.g. pop up into existence somewhere in between them, that you could only time-travel between "now" and whenever the time-based wormhole was first opened - which probably has something to do with causality. In any case, if at the very moment the wormhole gets opened you don't get a steady stream of grandfather-killing maniacs, you are probably safe forever :)

Any organization which is as openly against open access to scientific articles (journals, conference proceedings) yet continues to wave its clout as IEEE does deserves to die out in infamy.

If it weren't marketed as a "bright new idea" with an appropriate product, company and undoubtedly, patents, behind it, it could actually be useful if it was integrated into "normal" IM applications in approximately the same way the smileys are today. It would serve a purpose similar to "message macros" in IRC and others - a shorthand writing in situations where the messages are simple, with the default still being the "normal" way of typing messages. Using just the pictures is extremely constrained without elaborate support for creating new pictures and composing new pictures out of the old ones, but if one's workday is mainly centered over answering messages with "yes", "no", "coffee?" and "lunch?", it could be very convenient. :)

Actually, RC4 is not that much slower than Casear, mainly because is implemented sort of like Caesar with extra steps to modify the substitution table at runtime. OpenSSL can do RC4 on modern hardware faster than 300 MB/s. Even though it is as a "combiner" stream cipher and as such tricky to actually use securely, it would be much better than the probably ad-hoc implemented Caesar.

You mean like their official ones? They could have used their own crypto API, but they didn't.

You are right - this is 50% of the problem here. The other 50% is MS just being lazy.

Well? Can it predict the rest? :)

... is that you have all those other places to put stuff if they don't fit in just one place. Personally, stuff I like either goes into Wikipedia or tvtropes :)

"Computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes"