Only US Government speak can make traveling to space sound so incredibly dull.

Astronauts are involved in all aspects of assembly and on-orbit operations of the ISS. This includes extravehicular activities (EVA), robotics operations using the remote manipulator system, experiment operations, and onboard maintenance tasks.

So walking in outer space, fixing satellites, and doing cutting edge science in a zero gravity environment. Heck, "onboard maintenance tasks" makes it sound like they're hiring janitors.

When my cell phone company charges me for extra minutes over the ones allotted in my plan it's an exorbitant penalty fee. I seem to recall the same thing happening in the modem days. This is one of those things I would support if it was more like the way I get charged for electricity or water where there's just a flat fee for each unit closely tied to the actual cost of that thing. If Time Warner switched to 5c per GB then a pay for what you use fee would be much more reasonable. (I just guessed on that, is 5c/GB even close to reasonable?)

Of course when the story popped up I figured I'd try to find out if I was one of those big data users whose internet fees would go up to $600/month. I took a trip over to Time Warner's website and tried to find the place where they tell me how much data I used this month and last month. As far as I can tell there's no such place. So the take home message is, "Somebody somewhere is using too much of our bandwidth. We want to charge them more." As long as it's 'them' and not 'you' they can get away with stunts like this.

Verizon is an evil cell phone company and all but I don't think this is quite as sinister as the summary makes it out to be.

It sounds to me like the marketing department came up with a plan for a service and the billing people set the data caps. This is one of those situations where Hanlon's Razor applies pretty well, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Beyond all of the comments about how this is all standard Palingazing. I think there's a lot to be said for the sunlight foundation and this sort of analysis of a public official's emails.

Sure you could get this sort of information by FOIA request but it's reasonably apparent that politicians aren't tremendously afraid of the public reading their every word.

I gave the emails a quick glance and one of the things I'm most surprised by is how informal most of the emails are. I think if I were sending an email to the executive of an entire state I would use things like proper grammar and letter writing form.

Not that it's a worthwhile reason but I can come up with one.

If you've ever been to a pre-screening of a movie they take everyone's cell phone at the door. A technology like this would let you keep your phone in your pocket because it wouldn't be able to record.

(Again, not a good enough reason, but something.)

Clearly 911 should just do triage lists like my bank and phone company do.

I can see it now:

Please Press 1 if your cat is stuck in a tree.

Please Press 2 if you want to report a burglary or robbery that has already happened.

Please Press 3 if you want to report a burglary or robbery that is in progress.

Please Press 4 if you were in or would like to report a car accident.

Please Press 5 if you would like to report a fire.

Please Press 6 if you would like assistance for a heart attack or stroke.

For all other emergencies please stay on the line and a 911 operator will be with you shortly.

...

Due to the extremely high volume of call requests all of our operators are assisting other emergency callers at this time. Please stay on the line and your call will be handled in the order it was received.

That does depend a bit on circumstances. There are many ways in which leaked documents that do not include military strategic information could endanger the lives of troops.

The easiest example I could think up is if some of the leaked diplomatic cables lead us into an armed conflict. That could happen easily enough if something in there pisses off a world leader somewhere or if because the US can no longer keep its diplomatic communications secret nobody is willing to talk to us peacefully.

Wait, those are actual quotes? "Who cares, it's done" "We'll probably be fine" "it's wrong a lot"

These are the engineering geniuses we have doing the most complicated oil drilling possible? WTF! Last I checked "probably be fine" and "wrong a lot" don't count for sound scientific basis.

So your car will be able to drive itself but doesn't Lexus have a patent on cars that parallel park themselves? Is this going to be a problem? Your car can do everything except park...

I can't wait until you can buy different models of cars that have different quality self-driving systems. "Buy BMW we only crash 5% of the time."

Unfortunately I'll still be stuck with the low end Toyotas which crash 80% of the time.

I would agree with you except that's not what they're selling. To get tethering you need to be on a pay-for-what-you-get data plan for $25/month for 2GB. You then pay an additional $20/month for the tethering. (Note: GB 2-3 cost $10)

AT&T is doing something I've never understood why people let companies get away with. They're charging an extra $20/month for the tethering plan. Tethering is something that the iPhone does by itself it doesn't require any expense at all for AT&T. I could understand their tactic if they were still offering unlimited data plans because you would expect someone who uses their cell phone as a modem for their computer to use a lot more data. That's not what they're doing though, they're selling 2gb of data for $25/month. What's AT&T's excuse exactly? That for tethering users they're worried that people will actually use the data that they're paying for?

This is one of the reasons companies like to offer "unlimited" one-size-fits-all plans. The plan is unlimited but really it's more like 5gb, and almost nobody actually uses that much, and it's not ok to tether because then you'll be using more than they planned for, and nobody complains because you think of it as a plan that's "unlimited" but only up to the point that a cell phone would be expected to use. (Essentially Comcast and their ilk do the same, my "home" internet is "unlimited" but not exactly and only in the amount and reliability that a home user would expect, and in some ways that's ok.) But when these companies decide to change the plan to "you get 2gb/month" then I damn well expect that my 2gb should be given to me in whatever way I want it.

There's another little thing in this press release that I'm a fan of. For the 200mb plan (really, 200mb, really?): "If customers exceed 200 MB in a monthly billing cycle, they will receive an additional 200 MB of data usage for $15 for use in the cycle." And for the 2gb plan, "Should a customer exceed 2 GB during a billing cycle, they will receive an additional 1 GB of data for $10 for use in the cycle." Hooray everybody, it's the old Blockbuster late fee model! Use 2.001gb of data in a month pay for 4! Hooray!

This is one of those points about internet advertising that I don't quite understand. Sure the number of eyeballs reached is fewer for most websites than most traditional media outlets but they're tremendously more targeted eyeballs. At least when you're advertising on the web you can know a lot better that you're reaching the right thousand people.

That whole "Luke, I am your father." line isn't nearly as surprising if you saw episode 3 first.

Upside Down Flint Rubble Bubble Cake

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1/4lb (8tbl) butter

4 cups (18oz) unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup milk

2tbl Flint

1.5 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and sugar. Stir in eggs. Add half of the flour, mix. Add half of the milk, mix. Add the other half of the flour, then the other half of the milk. Fold in the flint and pour into your favorite upside down cake pan. Blow bubbles into the mixture with a straw. Bake for 45 min or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let cool upside down for at least one hour before removing from the mold.