You know, the color Kindle that's been on the market a year and a half?

Pssst, I heard some other top secret rumors you might be able to use: I hear that Apple is working on a phone!

...when Google shuts down the service 18-24 months from launch.

And where, pray tell, were all those liberal groups receiving spite audits and having their tax exempt status held up?

Unless you're the boss, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that you should have personal standards, that you force onto your colleagues to meet them like that.

In a business situation, the organization should have standards, and that's what they should meet. only if they've done something that is not fit for purpose, then yes, you can and should fail the review. But that's not you just not liking the way they've done it, you have to actually have a good reason to think it won't work.

The purpose of economic activity is to make money, not dot i;s and cross ts.

They've tested it at the test rig and it works fine.

The engine has a far easier time than scramjet engines, they should be able to keep the running for hours; good luck with getting a scramjet engine to do that!

SABRE idea has also got a huge advantage that the cycle works with excellent thrust and efficiency from zero speed all the way up to Mach 5.5. Scramjets ONLY work above Mach 4 or so.

The air starts to burn the nitrogen with the oxygen giving nitrates; this takes energy and tends to be rather inefficient and changes the aerodynamics.

Yeah, this makes sense because America is the most ethical country on the planet.

...when they require three booster packs and a prime card bought off eBay to be competitive!

Nuclear doesn't kill people, but fallout causes large areas of land to have to be evacuated, and causes MASSIVE economic damage. The nuclear pushers will claim that modern reactors don't melt down, but there's no good reason to think that that's 100% so. And if it's not, then they will sometimes and the more reactors there are, the more chance of it happening.

Note also that hydro- just ordinary hydro, not pumped- is virtually 100% efficient at storing wind energy; in many cases you just hold back the water and release it when the wind drops. Many hydro systems are now being fitted with bigger generators to make that work better.

I bet that the turbines can be built better to last much longer.

Environmentalism is always a tradeoff- trading off riverbeds against global warming for example. And the thing about hydro is that it doesn't matter if the hydro is already deployed, wind generally allows you to make better use of it, because when the wind blows you can hold back the water, and the evaporation losses are very small, and so it's very efficient. Pumped storage is OK too, but it's a rather less efficient.

Actually the solar panel thing isn't as good as you'd hope. Solar energy is still much more expensive than nuclear or wind, although it's getting there.

The gas thing, $10 billion sounds like a lot, but it's over 7 years or more, it's not as bad as it sounds, and wind is otherwise cheaper than nuclear anyway. Also, although you probably can get that high pressure front effect sometimes, wind speeds are generally higher in winter. That quote "In winter, when the most intense cold period coincides with a high pressure front, most wind turbines do not work." is only a partial truth.

Not necessarily.

Wind power energy cost is at grid parity right now, and is virtually CO2 neutral.

I mean, yeah sure, wind is intermittent; but it doesn't melt down, and storage can be done with hydro, pumped hydro or electric cars, or you can fill in with a bit of fossil or biofuel when the wind doesn't blow.

Wind power is growing at ~25% per annum. It's only about 3% at the moment, but with that growth rate, it's going to be huge.

Some countries like Denmark are already at 30%, and are aiming for 50%, and Denmark isn't even very good for wind resources (although they're surrounded by hydro, which certainly is good.)

Nuclear is more expensive than wind, and is also poor at load following; you normally find nuclear needs hydro as well; because it's so expensive to build it runs flat out and then the hydro does the load following- nuclear is better for baseload.

Why then have our political and business classes made the decision not to enforce immigration laws against an unchecked flow of illegal aliens from Mexico?

...at least according to witnesses, and he's still alive.

I guess he was surrounded by stormtroopers.

And a few random titbits about the bombing.