Here's Bill Gates' TED presentation on this project from almost 2 years ago:
http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Even if half of this design works out as advertised, i think this would be awesome! Pity that the 'western world' wasn't interested in investing in it and trying it out....

Living in Costa Rica, let me say that I really miss the 'classical' seasons. Here, we just have 6 months of dry time, followed by 6 months of rain in the afternoons. It's great for a couple of days, since the temperature is nice and cozy all year long, but it really does get boring after a while.
If I'd designed the climate here, I would've at least had the decency to switch between rain and dry every two weeks or so, to keep it interesting.

I agree, most of all with your first step, because IMHO, the others more or less follow naturally from critical thinking.
The problem is that all the conspiracy-nuts insist that they are the sole owners of - what THEY call - 'critical thinking'.
Why is there no obligatory class called 'critical thinking' in schools? Should be really easy to implement, and could easily made fun, i think.

Actually in Germany we (used to?) have a similar law: it is legal to drive with relatively low BAC, and if you get stopped by a routine control operation, that's fine. But if you get stopped because your were driving in a way that might seem "adventurous" (stuff lke running a yellow light, speeding, weird manouvers) with the same low BAC level, you'd get fined.

Well, then they should've just nuked the site from orbit!

I recently discovered a general list of unsolved problems, which I find fascinating. It's like a summary of the current limits of science and human knowledge and understanding.
TFA was ridiculous.

I just thought of an experiment:
Assuming your tinnitus is a near-constant frequency sine wave, what happens if you try to cancel the imaginary sound out using an external sound?
I have no idea whether it's even possible to try to sync soundwaves that exactly by hand/mind, but maybe you can hear/perceive some interference, at least?
I'm not saying that this could be a cure for tinnitus, but me, at least, would be fascinated if imaginary sounds can interfere and maybe even cancel out physical sounds...

On a related note: there used to be this nice open source skype-alternative (using SIP and all that) called openwengo, but i cant find it anymore. the company also offered a flash based SIP client (wengovisio), and a flash-based teleconferencing thing (wengomeetings), but i cant find any of them anymore. quite a pity.

a little side-rant: the person that designed the SIP protocol in such an incredibly NAT-unfriendly manner should be drawn and quartered. I know there are work-arounds, but i blame this NAT-unfriendliness for the rise of skype, and now we're stuck with that nonstandard closed protocol crap. I think it was the glorious idea of incorporating the IP addresses inside the SIP packets, or something like that. sigh.

on a related note: whatever happened to Google's open-source VoIP thingy that incorporated with XMPP/Jabber? I think it was called 'Jingle', but I haven't heard a lot about it since then. And what protocol is Google using for their video-chat in gmail?

try Gosmore. It's extremely(!) basic, but kinda works, once you figure out the controls. I;m using it on a very shitty Navigon unit here in Costa Rica. Little bonus: you can save you GPS traces, and add POIs, and then afterwards incorporate them back into the OSM database.
There seem to be other programs, though

I am assuming that it's a 'regular' modem answering the call on the other side - could somebidy explain to me how the two can handshake and sync, then? I always thought that the handshake/syncing part would at least require a bit of 'intelligence' from the modems involved?

What the heck is wrong with HP, or specifically, with the morons that designed the dv6000 series, of which i am a 'proud' (meh!) owner?
This laptop had its internatl power circuitry fry (HP acknowledges this, and offers a free mail-in repair, even after warranty), the Wifi-mini-PCI card simply disappeared completely (under Windows and linux), and chooses to re-appear aprox. once a month (HP acknowledges this, and IIRC also offers a free off-warranty repair for this. Both of these symptoms happened to a friend's DV9000, too. And now the battery is a fire hazard? I know i am spoiled because my last laptop was a good old indestructible Thinkpad A30 (well, the GPU has some problems, but after so many years, i'd say that's forgivable). But i will be sure not to buy an HP again, until i hear some VERY good news about their engineering skills.

No.
AFAIK, the catholic church explicitly says that science and faith should not contradict one another. The only thing they 'cherry pick' as not being allowed as being a result from evolution is the human 'soul' (whatever that is). I think that this move was really smart, since even Neuroscientists and Cognitive Scientists have a bit of a problem defining what 'soul', 'intelligence' or 'consciousness' is supposed to be, exactly, so the catholic church at least delayed the next big phase of contradiction between science in faith for a long while, and will always be able to pull some philosophy-of-mind trick later on to reconcile the two.
I believe that any 'spiritual element' of the human beings logically must, of course, be an epiphenomenon of the hardware which in turn evolved naturally. But I still think that the Vatican's definition was a very smart move.

I think it's a lot less black-and-white than this:
I once heard a talk from an ex-Nazi in Germany, and - even though he admitted his and the german's guilt without restraint - tried to at least explain what was going on in the following way:
He said that, yes, when someone asks him why basically nobody did anything to stop the holocaust, the best way to describe it was to say "we didn't really know about it!". But it's a different form of 'not knowing'. Sure, one could see the train-transports going to the concentration camps. Or the rounding up of jews in cities. But it's a natural psychological (irrational) defense mechanism to SOMEHOW try to think that maybe they wont be killed or tortured. So he asked the audience what they would answer when, 50 years from now, our grandkids ask us why we didn't save the africans that get slaughtered every couple of years in some uprising or genocide. Sure - we certainly do 'know' about it. But it's a different kind of 'knowing', since we try to distanciate ourselves from this reality, because it's just to harsh once you really grok how screwed up this whole situation is. Better to tuck it a away in some dark corner of your mind, and try to ignore it. It's a bit like HHGTTG's 'Somebody elses problem field'.