I suspect these catch up to the perpetrators in the college years. I can see such cheating working in large undergraduate classes, but have a hard time seeing it working later on once they get to upper division courses. By then, class sizes are smaller, teachers get to know their graduating class members and have the same students in several classes across multiple semesters. Unless there is some complacency going on such as the school wanting the football player to pass and putting pressure on the teachers, I have a hard time seeing it being a reliable method for getting a degree.

In other words, ability to succeed in the real world working at a job.

Something else to passively aggressively show that the US is thinking about separating from Russia and having a possible three way space race, or even giving China some aid.

Bush wanted a plan to explore space, the Moon, asteroids, and Mars when it was a nice speaking point on his state of the Union addresses, but he never even allocated any money to NASA to begin such programs. Year after year, he said we were going to Mars but had nothing but words to back that up. Their budget had a hard time keeping up with inflation. Additionally, if we were really going to Mars, not only would we need the ISS, we'd probably have to build another one to do all additional research needed for a Mars mission that couldn't get done there. Normally, I wouldn't reply to an AC troll who doesn't know what they're talking about, but the above was always a sore point with me.

China asked to join in on the ISS and we vetoed it. China said that they would launch their own space station. This is scheduled for 2020. We have already started a space race and are quite simply, waiting for the Chinese to catch up. They just got to a person into space in 2003 and landed something on the moon in 2007. Their proposed time table has them returning moon rock to earth in 2017, launching a space station in 2020, and a moon walk in 2024. So arguably, in a little less than ten years from now, they will have caught up with where the US was around almost two decades ago. Still, China proposes lots of things and fails to come through on them. If they actually get a space station launched and the ISS is retired with no replacement in the works, then I expect that the US will pay attention and start running again rather than walking.

Personally, I expect Musk to have his own space station up sooner.

We haven't forgotten. We're just still upset about De Gaulle dropping out of NATO, saying the Soviets would win the Cold War, and then going about being an asshole to US and Britain in an attempt to prove that France is still a super power. That is when all the surrender stuff began. In the end and after WW2, it is true that the US troops identified more with the German people and culture, but I have found no claims of the French being "surrender *anythings*" even in literature bitching about the French from that time period. It's always just been a cheap and easy shot used due to geo-political leanings. This is true with the "Freedom Fries" thing also. France was against the invasion of Iraq (along with Germany), but then again, guess which countries oil company (again, along with Germany) was dealing with Saddam to pump and ship their oil? Rather than explaining these reasons to the American people (who really probably don't care for the most part), they just rename "French Fries". "Freedom Fries".

Interesting idea, but perhaps relatively practical. Once I did the math for moving Haley Comet sized objects from the near Oort cloud to Mars to form an atmosphere (after taking into account atmosphere and ice already present on Mars) and the needed energy to do so on a scale of decades was measured in total daily energy output of the sun (~3 IIRC) and that was using assumptions that made it easier to do so. I'll have to sit down and do the math for moving it from closer sources some day and see how it compares.

I think you are looking at this wrong. they are not doing this because the consumers are demanding it. They are trying to make developing on the Windows platform more desirable to programmers. Ideally, write once, run everywhere. Then they let the programmers worry about making stuff that the consumers want.

It's the place where teens go to buy stuff in an attempt to make them not their parents, but they are doomed to failure.

I still have a collection of bowling shirts that I wear to work that were originally bought at Hot Topic. I don't even want to think about how long ago it was that rockabilly bowling shirts were in with kids (I'm probably working with some of them now.)

Slashdot is the worst of possible web sites, except for all the other web sites I've been to.

(Appologies to Winston Churchill.)

For Al-queda? I'm not sure. For Hamas and the PLO attacking Isreal, it was probably more money than they would every be able to save in their lifetime donated to their families. Used to be paid for by Iraq, but now Iran has stepped in to pay the price last I read. I can only imagine that Al-queda had a similar deal if nothing else.

Actually, this was answered in the GI Joe comic (written by the guy that had the idea for the new GI Joe IIRC). Cobra employees typically came form the slums of the world. They would find gang members, poor, the dispossessed. Move them to Cobra facilities where they are inducted into a new gang, clothed, fed, socialized into a new family, given education and training, entertainment, healthcare, and even plans to send some of their salary back to their families and help elevate them out of poverty. The typical Cobra base is 2/3rds dorms and recreation space. The rest is doing things that are probably nicer than what they did on the street and no worse than what the governments they used to live under are doing. Then one day, GI Joe attacks them, destroyed their lives, and shatter their dreams.

And that is apparently the point of TFA, risk assessment. Is the Earth being ridden by humanity more like a small plane, skydive jump plane, or commercial airliner? TFA says that our risk is more like that of a commercial airliner and we'd save more lives making sure there is proper medical equipment and people with training to deal with issues, than stocking it with emergency parachutes in case of imminent crash.