The explosion would be detected by a Defense Support Program satellite, but it would lack the double flash typical of nuclear detonations, so the military would probably not be seriously alarmed. People on the ground in SF on the other hand might have a little scare.

It could be much more serious if this happened over a less developed country possessing nuclear warheads but not the advanced detection equipment the US has, especially when its forces were on high alert. In June 2002, one such incident were just a few hours from happening. A meteor exploded over the eastern Mediterranean with the force of a small atomic bomb. Had it arrived some three hours later, it would have exploded over the border between India and Pakistan, when those countries had their nuclear forces on high alert. Since those countries probably do not have advanced detection equipment like the DSP mentioned above, they could have believed that the other side had launched a nuclear attack, and launched their own weapons in "retaliation".

Hydrogen has many uses that do not rely on being able to store it. For example, the Sabatier reaction combines hydrogen with carbon dioxide in the presence of a nickel catalyst to produce methane and oxygen. And methane is the primary component of natural gas, so I'm sure that you can see why that is useful.

Hydrogen can also be used together with carbon monoxide in the Fischer-Tropsch process to create liquid hydrocarbons, which could be used as synthetic petroleum. In other words, another very advantageous use of raw hydrogen without the associated problems with storing the raw hydrogen gas.

I disagree. There are several reasons why data transfer capacities of network equipment is measured in raw bits per second. First, different encoding schemes use different numbers of bits to transmit one byte. Second, at what layer do you want to measure the byte transport capacity? Do you wish to use the frame payload, the IP packet payload, the TCP stream payload, or something else? Third, even with a set encoding scheme and a defined layer, different packet sizes will give different amounts of overhead and thus differing data transport capacities for the same raw bitrate. Transmitting a stream of packets with a one-byte payload results in much more overhead and much lower payload transfer rate than if you use packets carrying 1 kb of payload. Fourth, features of various protocols significantly affect transfer rate. For an example compare the transfer rate of TFTP and FTP on the same network.

Actually, they do. In Sweden, hate speech is illegal except if you do it because of your religion. A few years ago, a pentecostal pastor said that gays were "a cancer in society". He was charged with hate speech and convicted, but the conviction was overturned because freedom of religion trumps other laws (including laws against hate speech) in the EU.

There have been other instances. Last year, a muslim man was applying for a job at a company. At the interview, he refused to take the hand of the female boss while shaking the hands of other men. When the Swedish Public Employment Service because of this incident concluded that this man didn't make a reasonable effort to get a job, they retracted his social security payments. He complained to the public anti-discrimination board and they filed suit against the employment service, charging that he had been discriminated against because of his religion, a court case which they won. That he himself had discriminated against the female boss because of her sex was obviously considered irrelevant, as religion and multiculturalism apparently trumps equality between the sexes in Sweden.

...first thing you should do when you get your hands on one of these? Make another.

File patent
Short sell technology stock 'o the day
Scare blog o' sphere
Profit

Everything is toxic in the right concentration.

NoScript blocks all executable content on a web page, including Java applets, Javascript, Flash, etc, and lets you decide which ones to allow on a per-site basis.

You're right, just like not collecting stamps is a hobby.

...Theory of Everything held a press conference today, stating "There is no Stephen Hawking."

When asked what the implications were as to whether or not there could ever be a Stephen Hawking, ToE replied "The door is open for a Stephen Hawking in the future, but it can only be a possibility if graphene birds fly out of my lily white butt..."