There are two NASAs: The Bad NASA that wastes billions on manned pork rockets to nowhere and the Good NASA (Jet Propulsion Lab) that has had one success after another with unmanned probes. I love it when the ex-pilots who run NASA try to take credit for JPL's success, even when they are trying to kill planetary exploration in favor of more manned pork.

There's actually a 3rd NASA. It's the "hidden NASA" that very few notice - I'll give you a hint - it deals with the first "A".

NASA actually does a lot of research/testing for aeronautics. It's just relatively low-key. If you're a pilot, you also keep a handy stack of NASA Aviation Safety Reporting forms with you (NASA is tasked as a neutral party to manage aviation safety issues - NASA anonymizes the forms before forwarding to the NTSB/FAA).

It's only the space parts that get all the glory. All the down-on-Earth parts work in relative obscurity.

This video explains it well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

This kind of email hell is quite common at the office.

Impossible. As everybody skilled in economics knows, there are no low salaries, only lazy workers.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to dig up anything on Samsung's website that provided me any clues. They have plenty of fab projects(including some sensor stuff) and various high-end measuring instruments and things; but the only references to this gamma-detector chip were stories about this cellphone. It'd be nice to find a datasheet and a digikey catalog number...

No, he hasn't been accused of anything (as yet). He's wanted for questioning in relation to a reported crime, and without further questioning, the Swedish legal system cannot formally file charges (or dismiss the case).

Since he had left the country by that time, they ordered him detained "in absentia," and issued a european arrest warrant for him on suspicion of some degree of rape, and a couple counts of "sexual misconduct" or "harassment," depending on the translation.

If he is extradited, and the investigation finds no reason to believe formal charges are warranted, he will be released & returned to UK jurisdiction. If he is extradited, and charges are warranted, they will be filed & he will stand trial for those charges.

Shouting "he's not accused of rape" and flogging a 2 year old article with the scoff-worthy "sex by surprise" translation does not mean any of this procedure is unlawful, outside due process, or indeed, even slightly unreasonable.

Yes, actually. In the European Court of Justice, which is roughly the EU equivalent of the US Supreme Court.

The UK could sue the Swedish government there for "failure to fulfill member obligations," which could result in severe financial penalties being imposed on Sweden, and perhaps other punishments could be doled out as well by state level courts, as well - e.g., jail for specific law breakers / conspirators, if it's found that specific people in the Swedish justice department conspired with people in the UK or the US to break the law, etc. etc. etc.

You've been mislead by the summary. As my anonymous sibling said, "Bed rest is how they induced bone loss in order to test the test. The test itself does not require bed rest."

The test is just analyzing urine. From the article: "With the new technique, bone loss is detected by carefully analyzing the isotopes of the chemical element calcium that are naturally present in urine. Isotopes are atoms of an element that differ in their masses. Patients do not need to ingest any artificial tracers and are not exposed to any radiation, so there is virtually no risk, the authors noted."

1) Which is why he's being extradited under a European Arrest Warrant. You know that your arrest can be ordered so you can answer questions as part of an investigation, especially if the court has ordered you to appear, and you fail to do so, right?

2) Completely false. European Arrest Warrants, as 'federal' documents governing the extradition of Mr. Assange from the UK to Sweden, also come with the stipulation that the receiving country (Sweden) may not pass along an extradited individual without the express consent of the original country extraditing him to Sweden (that is, the UK). Given this, Sweden would either:
a) have to turn it's back on the ENTIRE EU in order to say that the terms of the European Arrest Warrant do not apply and they're not bound by those restrictions because they have some other treaty with the USA;
b) Get the UK's permission - not likely -they already have him in custody, if the US felt it was likely to get the UK's approval, they could have requested extradition directly from the UK.

While still in custody, Justice Department requests extradition tot he US.

At which point Sweden must go back to the UK and request a UK justice minister's approval to extradite on to a third party non-EU state.

European Arrest Warrants do not allow a state to "pass along" a person who's been extradited to them to a third party, especially a non-EU third party, without the express approval of the rendering state (in this case, the UK).

Which means that for the US to extradite him from Sweden, they have to get TWO countries' approval: UK and Sweden - which means that if they can't extradite him now, because the UK wouldn't approve, they sure as hell won't extradite him when he's in Swedish custody, because the UK would still have veto power, and it would also require Sweden's willingness to comply with the extradition request.

It doesn't magically become "easier" to extradite him because he's been handed over to Sweden. The only way he'd be at more risk would be if Sweden seems poised to fly in the face of every legal and moral obligation it has as an EU member state and hand him over illegally because they... what - want to sell more Volvos, and we gave them a sweet deal? And they can't say "WE DROP THE CHARGES, AND NOW HAND YOU OVER TO US HA HA HA!" without violating treaties and other legal obligations central to their EU membership, and which would probably be grounds for horrendous economic and legal sanctions.

You have to make a much more compelling case than "USA EVIL! ASSANGE GOOD!" for your conspiracy theory to be even remotely plausible.

I'm so glad they made the ID a fixed length 16-digit number. Experience shows that we are very good at predicting the total number of IDs ever to be needed.

You know, a financial payment card (credit card, debit card, etc) are 16 digits in length, The first 6 are special as is the last, which mean there are 9 unique ID digits in it. Yet we don't seem to be running out of numbers even though when a bunch get "liberated" from a payment processor, most financial institutions simply re-issue a new number to you. (And it's not like they dare re-issue an old number either - otherwise they could've saved all the effort and stayed with 14-digit numbers). There seems to be little concern about running out of card numbers.

And if they did the number coding right, they could make it a 17 digit number so when we're all spacers and such, you can prepend "0" to all existing numberholders and it'll still work out.