From TFA:

He explained that in that figure, the Keck telescope in the Northern Hemisphere seemed to predominantly measure the variation of alpha in one direction while Chile’s VLT in the Southern Hemisphere measured it in going the other way. “It looks a lot like what they’re seeing is coming from a difference between the two telescopes.”

Until these findings can be verified by multiple instruments per hemisphere, this looks more like a desperate attempt to save face than present credible data.

Perhaps we might start demanding that every Chinese company wanting access to American markets must locate offices here, staff them with US workers, and share their technology in turn. We did that with the Japanese...

Simple, use the following as your search expression: "[ITEM] -'Be the first person to review'" Adjust the filter as needed, or add additional terms.

Ummm... Christianity is from the Middle East. Just sayin'.

Caching is an important consideration for content providers, but it doesn't figure into net neutrality.

When ISPs complain about the small percentage of their users that actually take their contract at face value and utilize all the bandwidth they've purchased on a 24/7 basis, they're actually complaining that they've sold something that they don't own, and now they're having problems. They've sold Y bandwidth to the consumer, but they've only bought X from their parent provider.

This is criminal.

Caching, OTOH, is an arrangement where a content provider such as Hulu will arrange to have content requested by customers of an ISP cached on the ISP's domain such that future requests for that content will be serviced from the cache instead of additional requests to the content provider's network. First and foremost, this saves the content provider money by reducing requests to their local network. It may also result in greater scalability for popular events, as content providers have bandwidth limits. But for normal operations, caching will have little effect on the QoS for end users.

In the end, if ISPs continue to oversell their available bandwidth, they have no one to blame but themselves.

After witnessing two very important classes of users, I can honestly say that the iPad offers what no other platform has done to date.

First, K - 12 users. The iPad is the best learning tool ever invented, bar none. Doubt me, then put one of an iPad in the hands of a 2 year old with spelling software and you'll have a child reading at the age of three.

Second, and this is the big one: Baby Boomers. By now, they all wear reading glasses, want to surf the web, read books, participate in social networking with their children and grand children, look at photos, etc... But, with big fonts, and a simple touch interface. There has literally been nothing to date that can touch it, and it is slowly becoming a revolution in how those with sight impairment can consume media.

We have seen only the tip of the iceberg with this device. And though there will be many, many competitors in this arena, if the past history with the iPhone is any indication, Apple's competitive advantage in UX will prove to be unbeatable in the marketplace.

When it comes to the largest demographic in the history of the planet, and children... I think Apple has nailed the most lucrative markets available.

The commercial providers that decided to capitalize on a standard that was developed by DARPA using taxpayer funds are now complaining that they can't make it work.

The internet is *the* killer app. People buy computers for the sole reason of accessing resources on the net. The amount of commerce facilitated worldwide is staggering. And these jokers are telling us they can't make a successful business model out of it.

The ideal system relies on multiple tiers of providers, each one leasing bandwidth from their parent and redistributing it to their clients. This happens down to the end user, who should be expected to pay for all the bandwidth that they use. Simple. As the end user, they pay only for the bandwidth of received data, not for the total distance the data was required to travel.

This allows a level playing field for new media enterprises, personal publishing, and an ever evolving means of communication. It has revolutionized the world in a very short time, vaulting third-world nations into emerging powerhouses, and connecting people in ways that previous generations could not have imagined.

So, to put this in jeopardy for the reasons given is patently criminal.

The only reason that ISPs have run into problems is that they've criminally oversold their bandwidth. They truly have been selling something they don't already own. If you purchase a contract for a 50Mb connection, they should expect that connection to be saturated 100% of the time. If it's unlimited, they should bill according to their costs. If that doesn't make sense to the consumer, sell bandwidth by the MB. Instead, they've built a business model on the presumption that end users would only utilize a fraction of what what sold.

In reality, this is greed on several levels, since it not only reveals unfair trade practices (they're selling something they don't have), but they're also trying to kill competition when verticals are in question. They were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon when they were in high growth mode, but now the fight has taken to the trenches some have decided to get ugly.

This is bigger than any one company or one country. Long term, few issues will have an impact quite as powerful as net neutrality on how our civilization evolves.