Nice nitpick on an analogy. Can we discuss the point the analogy is making instead please?

i didn't mean that any of these was on purpose.

Oh really? Poor choice of words then:

"of course, russian govt is the most knowledgeable - they shot down the damn plane"

They supplied the stuff but didn't pick the target. Pretending otherwise, besides being stupid, is playing into the hands of those that want to go back to the good old cold war days were they could sell plenty of goofy military hardware that never had to actually work.

Your post above seems to imply that. We don't know yet which criminal, hair trigger idiot or whatever caused this tragedy. What is disgusting is people getting political milage out of it to push their own "Good Old Days of the Cold War" barrow.

for the kremlin

Don't be a tool. The fallout for this is a massive pain in the backside for the Kremlin. Putin may be an utterly evil prick but he's not an idiot that would plan something like this to play directly into the hands of the idiots that want to bring the cold war back.

also, the terrorists are sent and controlled by russia

Was my "Yorktown captured by French Terrorists" comment something that you have too poor a grasp on history for you to be able to get the point? How about this then: we know where the missile was made but everything else is still being worked out, we especially have no idea how much control is being exerted over various groups in the region either.
You may be right but it's far too early for either of us to know.

But that was -totally- different. That naval captain made a totally understandable mistake in the fog of war,

Subsequent reports showed that he was well out of his depth and exceeding his authority when an ill-conceived "show the flag" mission hit contact with real sea mines (reconditioned WW1 mines made by Tsarist Russia!) and other problems such as friendly fire from the Iraqis they were sent in to support. Under such pressure he was unable to operate and took a variety of shortcuts that resulted in shooting down an airliner sticking to it's schedule. Admitting the mistake in any way was not seen as acceptable so he was just quietly promoted to an appointment on land.

News from two centuries ago - "Yorktown captured by French Terrorists".
Looks stupid doesn't it? That's what you get when you oversimplify these things and assume that the backers are equivalent to the perpetrators. The backers in this case may be just as unpleasant as Napolean or more so but we still don't know which bunch shot it down (the "admission" was poor translation, like "plane was shot down" vs "we shot the plane down") and they all (including the Ukranian military) have Russian made rockets.

Uh, no. PCIe SSDs are just coming into regular use in many places

OCZ seem to have been selling them via retail outlets for three years or more - let alone high end use.
There were various PCI things before the PCIe interface came into use.

I an Australian being a stirrer so I'm the one that should apologise.

The last one was good but the Canadians burnt it down.

"next-generation technology like non-volatile memories and PCIe SSDs"

That generation has been going on for a while storagedude. People have been scaling according to load to deal with it.

Mark I suggest you consider that the military has provided the heavy lifting with infrastructure in both China and India, and even with that help it's still been a slow process.
Maybe while Ziggy is out of the nuclear loop off molesting the NBN there is some hope to get something done but even properly managed it would be a difficult task and require a lot of outside expertise to be brought in.
There are similarities in some components (the two ANSTO guys assisted me with remaining life analysis of high temperature pipework in coal fired "kettles"), full scale commercial reactors themselves are unlike anything we've got in this country. As for making fuel - a massive amount of infrastructure is required there.

The only likely way in at this point is to buy something small developed elsewhere in a decade or two with the expensive prospect of getting fuel from them as well - in which case it will be a political instead of an economic decision unless designs improve drasticly. While some of the thorium stuff looks like it's ideal for using up high grade waste with very little reprocessing, Australia could not benefit from that convenience since we don't have piles of old fuel rods lying around.
So while civilian nuclear may be a good idea it requires a lot of resources to kick it off and sustain it - viable in India, China, Indonesia etc but in Australia one plant would be about it, then we'd have to send everyone who built it home. There has been a lot written about the topic. Some by idiots with political connections parachuted into sinecures but others by people with a clue. It's getting so we can't even make steel in this country so who's going to be able to manufacture the difficult components for reactors? That's why it's seen as too little gain for too much pain and has degenerated into nothing but a political wedge issue (eg. the nuke plant in every port map brought out a couple of elections ago - it made no sense and was just NIMBY bait).

Personally I think a big nuclear plant to supply Sydney+Melbourne would be cool but then what do you do next? Australia is a bit too small to support a civilian nuclear power industry.

How can that be argued that without considering the science itself - for instance the models that are falsified and replaced by more accurate ones as more information becomes available?
I've got nothing other than angry stuttering and references to the devil when I've brought that one out on science deniers who push the "study of climate is not a science" line.

is real (it might be or might not be, but who cares?)

Intentional or not that sums up a very major problem here.What is real or not real is not seen to be important by those that decided to start a "debate" about something that was a settled issue when a report about it landed on President Johnson's desk. They just want to keep on mass debating to satisfy their own short term needs.

In practical terms civilian nuclear technology did stop advancing in the 1970s because that's when the AP1000 design dates back to, and the AP1000 is the most recent thing that's been built (or still under construction in China, I've lost track).

Australia doesn't have the infrastructure to seriously consider nuclear power and consumes too little electricity for it to be able to justify spending to create that infrastructure. There is a small research reactor (I've worked with two materials scientists from there) but it's not capable of providing much of a seed for the required infrastructure - that would require a lot of people equipment etc from overseas and a long time to establish. So it's seen as too much pain for too little gain.