I agree with this sentiment and the response saying that any meaningful investment in the region would also have generated more returns.

I think the number is waay above 500 billion. I don't have time to google the citations, but various credible parties have pegged the number well above a trillion and that doesn't even take into account the long term costs associated with disabilities, missed opportunities, ill will towards the US, interest on the trillion we borrowed to conduct the war, bad karma, etc.

And, no, I am not a delusional hippy or a communist, I am just smart - something we have not been as a country lately.

I would strongly sanction what they wrote. The sore loser "change the rules because we lost the game" knee-jerk reaction is an embarrassment.

It's worth noting that Dion basically imploded the Liberal government with their "green shift" plans. If the Liberals didn't backtrack and try for another direction, the Conservatives would have had a much, much larger majority. Kyoto has not sold in Canada at all, and the tiresome "fuck you Harper!" tirades on her do not mirror actual sentiment in Canada.

That comment is, pardon the expression, horse shit. It is fundamentally wrong on virtually every level.

While Canada does, like pretty much every jurisdiction, have levels of government with their own responsibilities, in most matters the federal government reigns supreme. There have been a number of false starts at federal legislation to achieve Kyoto, but they were abandoned because they were politically untenable.

The two most populace provinces -- Quebec and Ontario -- have actually been taking substantial action on greenhouse gases. Ontario gets little credit, but we've been shutting down coal plants while hugely expanding renewable resources.

the Conservative Party of Canada who currently form the Government of Canada tend to base their views on what's "best" for Alberta

Score:5? Seriously?

Quick question to see how much you really know: How much does Alberta and the oil industry contribute the federal government coffers?

The entirety of this nation has been propped up by the oil sands, like it or not.

This model is inaccurate as it does not provide for the Reptilian space.

2) They have a cult of fanboys who would literally buy anything with the Apple logo on it and those people then pressure other people to get Apple products to "be cool".

I keep hearing this, but it is not borne out by reality. There would have to be an awfully large number of cult fanboys to sustain the kind of numbers Apple is posting. At what number do cult fanboys turn into satisfied customers?

I've been a ham since I was 12 (in 1989) and got seriously sidetracked with writing code over the past 12 years or so. It's been absolutely *amazing*.

However lately I set up my old station again, upgraded to a new Elecraft K3 transceiver, and have been having a blast. The Elecraft K3 has the best receiver ever tested by most of the labs that have run tests on it. It's an ingenious hybrid of analog and digital circuitry, created by a company in Aptos California. Until recently most of the highly desirable gear was from Japanese manufacturers, and with all the advantages in manufacturing that exist in Asia, I thought it unlikely that US firms would be able to continue to compete. But Elecraft has done a remarkable job.

Getting on the air again after about a decade off the air, I've noticed that CW (morse code) is more popular than ever. And better receiver tech has made it even more effective than it was in the past. Much of the equipment used by hams today has DSP, and for the first time I'm seriously considering getting into low power (QRP) operation just b/c of this. Finally, probably thanks to the removal of the requirement, morse code is appreciated as a fun activity.

Some fun things to do: HF Contesting is my favorite, particularly on CW (morse). Much like meditation, it clears the mind of distractions and I come away from it feeling refreshed and exhilarated. And CW is quite musical compared to RTTY which I find fatiguing to hear -- even though the computer is doing the "work" of decoding it, some audio is needed to help zero beat signals.

I've noticed that there has been a big movement toward scientific thinking about radio performance and antenna performance. Antennas and propagation are full of mystery, but they are ultimately constrained by the laws of nature, and hams are doing away with superstition and using antenna modeling software and the scientific method to create very cool designs, particularly with under-appreciated low-loss feedlines.

There is a young ham radio superstar, callsign NO3M who has destroyed the competition in some of the most hard core CW contests. This guy apparently races motorcycles as well. Highly impressive. This guy is the DHH of ham radio.

I think that among the type of people who love building things, who love understanding things, tinkering, etc., ham radio will always have an appeal. Worldwide hams are extremely nice and friendly people, who are always willing to help someone new. Sure there are a few kooks on 75m but I think 75m can safely be ignored except during (and immediately after) contests ;) The rest is pure awesome.

I'm all for hemp, but what's the big deal about allowing THC-producing plants as well? Hell, that would solve even more problems while we are at it - like shifting people away from the twin killers of alcohol and tobacco and making people a little less violent and a lot less consumeristic - not to mention more contemplative. Furthermore, we could pump all that wasted DEA money into agricultural, space and energy research - not to mention that we would take away a key wedge that the government uses to invade our privacy and control us.

In this image,

40.458638,93.390827

the crazy squiggly lines to to somewhat superimpose the same natural lines underneath.

And if you zoom in on that terrain, it is fucking crazy looking. Looks like a scene from an Aliens movie.

No, his logic was that it would suck the battery and resources out of the iPads and provide a bad touch experience - both of which would have reflected poorly on the product and on Apple had the customers installed it.

The public is not really tech savvy and would have installed it on their IOS devices and blamed Apple for the resulting security, usability, and performance degradations. Developers wouldn't have had a reason to use HTML5 and Adobe wouldn't have caved and thrown in with HTML5. Seems pretty logical to me. Choices like not using Flash are what made the iPad so useable and so different from all the other tablets that didn't sell worth a shit.

Also, let us not forget that, for all that time people bitched about Apple not having Flash, it was not available even for Android anyway. There was no product.

" I do not believe that local dialects and pronunciation is the issue"

I have been using the voice input functionality since it came out, and have been shocked at the startling accuracy of it. It is almost never wrong, and is eminently useful for navigation, making calls (by number or by name), or for voice dictation in a message. I use it frequently and it is shockingly rare that it isn't dead on.

I'm talking about just general voice to text, not about translate which adds another language to language issue, however Google has the voice recognition thing DOWN. I imagine there are some accents and manners of speech that present it difficulty however.

As many people will point out here, this is not Apple's original technology, they weren't the first to do it, there will be use cases where it won't work, you can do it much more cheaply and non-walled-garden-y with a rooted Nexus GTi Turbo running cyanogen, Apple steals everything, they're an evil empire tracking your every move and other such tiresome memes etc etc,

Thank You. Nicely put. I come to Slashdot because I dig technology and user interface issues - I dig them when they are done by MS, Linux, or Apple. This hatred of Apple is tiresome. How you can look at something like Siri and not be excited is beyond me.

but they were never popular in the mainstream because they didn't have the "cool factor"

Yeah, that and the fact that they sucked balls.

Why does it have to be either or? People get so worried that everything is changing. It has been one way for ages and now there are other ways. I agree that it is cool, useful and necessary to have your apps all on screen and available, but there are definitely times when it is nice to have the option to work full screen - video editing, for example - something where you are engrossed in one thing and you don't want or need to see the clutter of the desktop and the other windows.

a massive grid that would run 36,000 kilometers and link Japan with countries including India, China, and Russia.

It's only a matter of time until we have Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion power grid.