And while that's true. Few people (if any?) have died from their sprinklers coming on. Many people have died in a fire...

So the cost of "fire" vs. "sprinkler" isn't symmetric.

.NET is really what Java wishes it was.

Uh... difficult to read regardless of your milk tongue?

Which is interesting from a European background. We've definitely noticed for a long time, and our cars don't squeal nearly as much in the movies as US ones do. It was something I grew up with, learning that american cars apparently squealed their tires on ever turn. I even remember news pieces talking about the difference in tire technology between the US the Europe and how american cars actually squealed more IRL than ours... Wasn't so, it turned out.

So, given that we've gotten rid of bullets going an annoying "pew pew" in was movies, is there any chance of US cars not squealing their way around every single corner?

As someone who developed GPRS for Ericsson back in the day, I don't even know where to start...

There were a number of different competing standards, in different parts of the world. That CDMA wasn't mandated in the US was not for lack of trying by the US manufacturers.

And, no, if we're talking about true packet data, i.e. not "phone modems", GSM/GPRS did emphatically not use a dedicated slot per user for data communication. Instead all the available "data" slots (and there can be many) were/are shared dynamically between all the users wanting to receive/transmit using dynamic reservation protocols (depending on, among other things, whether you have data to send/receive). Indeed EDGE is just GSM/GPRS with more data slots available, and with mobiles that can use more slots in sequence.

All this is moot anyway, as the explosion of demand for mobile IP, necessitated completely new systems anyway. And since they were new, they weren't hampered by what was already there. You say that UMTS is based on CDMA, which is true, but there are also FDMA and TDMA parts, and even versions of the UMTS protocols. So that UMTS is CDMA and that's superior to GSM which is TDMA does not follow.

I could write a book about the rest, but that'll have to do for now.

Well, for completeness sake, there are specialised situations in which it can yield highly valuable results, and criminals for example, know that. I'm thinking of situations like "Tell me the combination to your safe, or else..." and the like. Time locks on bank vaults were for example invented to stop the all too popular kidnapping the bank manager and holding his family hostage, "or else".

But of course you're right, that as a means of intelligence gathering these situations are so uncommon, as to render the method completely useless.

And here's what the actual historians have to say about that: http://www.reddit.com/r/badhis...

So yeah, Vermont Yankee going offline will change things, but we'll manage. Indeed, losing a source of subsidized power will create more opportunities for expansion of renewables.

And that is almost certainly the whole and entire real reason for opposition to the plant closing.

Remember, Green is the New Red.

Automobile waste has a half-life longer than nuclear waste.

And the sun is radioactive! Oh double noes!

Well, let me know when automobile waste has a half-life equivalent to that of nuclear waste, then.

It's a false equivalency. Yes, coal and oil subsidies are bad, but that doesn't mean the Bush/Cheney nuclear subsidies aren't substantially worse.

Nuclear was on the way out until Cheney stepped in and threw regulated capitalism out the window in favor of Soviet-style centralized economic decisionmaking.

Well, that is how they stay competitive with all the other subsidized industries.

In theory, the government subsidies are intended to further social goals that the free market cannot adequately address without regulation.

In practice, the government subsidies are treats that the political powers (such as congressmen) hand out to economic powers (such as favored contributors).

Since our economic powers have evolved into multinational corporations that actively oppose our social goals and purposely subvert our cultural values, this means that the government subsidies are quite often doing the exact opposite of what they are nominally intended to do.