First, "at a rate 10 times the previous gold standard" is interesting, but meaningless. What is the actual rate, and how is it measured?

Second, what is the cost and availability of the materials needed for the catalyst? Does this require some kind of unobtainium? The article is very vague here.

Third, Is this something we can practically manufacture in any kind of real scale or are we talking microscopic results measurable only in the lab?

Well, because I've had some hazmat training as part of my volunteer firefighter work, I am at least somewhat aware of basic chemistry which could be misused to cause harm but which would be very unlikely to fall into the category of things which would be caught by the checkpoints I've seen. Some, for example, could be impregnated in ordinary clothing and would not be at all obvious.

Note that 1) I do -not- know all the things those machines look for, and have never tried to found out; 2) I'm not a chemist and can't offhand even recall the name of the stuff I have in mind (though I did see a live demonstration of its effects once); and 3) I certainly don't advocate trying any of this kind of thing.

My point is that if I, with a very limited exposure to this kind of information, can conceive of ways to exploit the system then I have no doubt people with real expertise in the related fields would have absolutely no problem coming up with far more dangerous "solutions" if they thought about it for any length of time.

If I thought these security measures actually worked, I would be all in favor. I don't believe they do. I believe someone with a moderate level of expertise should have no problem bringing the materials through such a screening that would be sufficient to cause a fair degree of mayhem either on board a plane or even in a terminal.

Hell, if I really thought we'd be more secure, I'd walk through the damn scanner bare ass naked. I'm not exactly a body double for the statue of David, but what the hell, it is only a human body and nothing to be so ashamed about. A little less body shame and a little more violence-shame wouldn't hurt our society at all.

Since it does not really add to the security of the situation, however, I am not in favor of this kind of intrusive search strictly for the purpose of security theater. Hiring lowest dollar contractors at least possible wages to perform such an important role is itself a fool's game.

I'm sorry, but no matter much this woman felt violated -- and surely she was bothered by the search -- I find it hard to believe in "....a particularly invasive search involving multiple incursions of a finger into the passenger's vagina." I just find that somewhat implausible unless either the woman wasn't wearing any pants or underwear or else the TSA person was a remarkably talented person with a fair degree of privacy for what I would expect in a security line.

Somewhere, maybe, there is some exaggeration going on.

Lithium Ion batteries are inherently unstable and have to be charged and discharged very carefully. Unlike the old school batteries you'd think of, these batteries have a controller to manage them built in. When that fails, you have big problems (remember the defective ones a few years ago that would just burst into flames?)

I'm not sure I'd that much every month just to play a game.

Thanks for that. I've been using CENTOS and been quite happy with it. For what I do, I don't need to be (and will never really be) up to the minute with versions anyway -aside from keeping up with security patches to the extent I can. Are there good reasons, other than speed of the release cycle, to move from CENTOS to SL?

It is useful for me to be able to tell my clients, who generally insist on web sites supporting IE6 and above, as well as Firefox and Safari -- that according MICROSOFT, this is a bad idea.

Further, it is useful in helping me make the case to not have to support IE6; because the site shows only 12% of browsers are IE6 and something like half of those are in China (who my customers aren't generally targeting). In fact, In the USA it is now less than 1% of browsers.

Armed with this cart from Microsoft, I can say to my client "Ok, it's going to cost you 30% more for me to build your web site if I have to support IE6 and it will only help you with something like 1/2 of 1 percent of potential browsers. (BTW: I totally just make up that 30% more number to make the point, but I think that might be a fair place to start if I had to put a number on it).

At IBM "Lotusphere" event, the closing general session was a preview match. It was done as close the the same was as an actual jeopardy show but with contestants picked from a small mini-tournament of attendees, and a comedian as host instead of Alex T.

Having been present at this (and getting my picture taken next to the Watson "icon/screen") and then watching the Nova episode, I can say for sure that the Nova show was a very well done description of what happens; as well as Watson's strengths and weaknesses.

I'm not sure if they'll show it on the live TV show taping, but in the run through we saw, they showed Watson's top 3 picks with a level of confidence on each. It was as interesting to see the second and third choices as it was to see what it actually came up with for an answer.

A couple of things were updated from when they must have taped the Nova show. First, Watson was far more strategic when it came time to place bets than it had been shown on Nova. Second, it was far better at understanding weird language in the categories.

I'm looking forward to the show.

RAM is cheap.
High speed uplink is not cheap.
Peering agreements are manipulative, expensive, and sometimes extortionate.

So...

The poorly designed, poorly peered, under allocated back haul links can't handle the traffic that routers want to push through them -- but since RAM is cheap, operators just add RAM to the buffers so that when those back-haul lines slow down for a second the packets can get pushed through.

And we're blaming the buffer for the problem?