The satellite blog at University of Wisconsin has more information including some images from GOES 14, now turned on.

Cliff Mass, University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Professor, has been arguing for an upgrade for a long time. He sees great potential for this new system if used right. The reasons for the upgrade boil down to having "huge economic and safety benefits" with better forecasting, and he says these benefits are within our reach.

Some the concerns raised here were addressed in the survey. Check out this quote from this Arstechnica article.

About 33 percent of abstracts were categorized as endorsing the consensus, with 0.7 percent rejecting it. The remainder made no statement discernible as either. So among the abstracts with a clearly-stated position, 97.1 percent backed the consensus.

But what about the others? Did those abstracts not state a position because the consensus is so well-accepted as to make doing so unnecessary? Or was the human impact on climate often presented as uncertain in these papers? To answer this question (and further verify the ratings of the other abstracts) the group sent a survey to the authors whose email addresses were listed with the papers—over 8,500 in total. The survey was completed by 1,200 of them, who rated their own abstracts using the same criteria as the research group.

Of the abstracts that the research group had rated as not expressing a position the authors rated more than half of the papers as endorsing the consensus. Overall, 62.7 percent were self-rated as endorsing the consensus, 1.8 percent as rejecting the consensus, and 35.5 percent as having given no position.

So of those that expressed a position, 97.2 percent endorsed the consensus and 2.8 percent rejected it according to the authors of those papers.

I see it as pretty clear that the scientific consesus is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. There is not considerable disagreement among climate scientists.

If you want DRM use the object tag. It is already supported. There is nothing stopping media companies today from from creating html5 web pages/apps to display DRM encombered video. They can use their proprietary, platform-specific browser plug-ins already with the object tag. If you are going to require DRM, I don't see a big difference between using the video tag and the object tag.

Yes, I see we are talking pass each other. I agree that translation to English one can miss out on the meaning. English has one word for love. Greek has 4 words for the English love (maybe more if you count the "I love pizza" definition). I have learned the meanings of those 4 words. I know that agape is the predominate love word of the Bible. That is why there are seminaries for ministers to learn Biblical Greek and Hebrew and there have been tons of theses over the centuries digging into the meaning of the texts. I don't know Greek so when I dig deep into a passage I read from several different translations and read commentaries on the passage. I believe I am getting the meaning of the text.

The oldest complete Bible is roughly 300 years after the original texts, however there are 7 incomplete manuscripts before 200AD and 41 before 300AD. (It is from the answer in question 7.) The oldest fragment (from the Gospel of John) could be less that 30 years after the original writing. There are also the many writings of the Church Fathers that quote the scriptures. I would surmise that you would say this is not enough evidence to convince you that the New Testment we have today is not corrupt. Correct? If you say that, what you do is say that there is not enough evidence for any ancient document. The New Testament has by far the most and oldest (relative to the originals) manuscripts.

This is where we really differ. You see the story of Jesus as a myth set in an historical setting. Correct? I see it as historical story, because it is in a historical setting and the known geography. And I guess that you would discount any miracles as impossible because they violate the laws of nature. Am I correct? Whereas I see the miracles of Jesus and him rising from the dead as God outside of this universe reaching into the universe to demonstrate his love and concern for us. This seems to me to be the big difference between us (if I am correct in what you believe).

I had heard that there was over a 99% certainty of the New Testament and I had to search to find the original source, which I think I have found as Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament. This is the Greek text that is used for most of our modern translations. Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament puts an estimate on the certainty of the "translation" Here is an explanation:

Q: Why does the percentage of variants listed (97%), differ from another number of 99.5%?
A: The Aland et al’s Greek Translation of the New Testament, besides giving manuscript variations, gives an estimate of the certainty of the translation. In the fourth edition p.3, the letters mean:
A - "indicates that the text is certain"
B - "indicates that the text is almost certain"
C - "indicates that the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text."
D - "which occurs only rarely, indicates that the Committee had great difficulty in arriving at a decision."
Note that in the 3rd edition on p.xii-xiii, the letters have slightly different meanings.
A - "virtually certain"
B - "some degree of doubt"
C - "considerable degree of doubt"
D - "very high degree of doubt"
You arrive at close to the 97% figure by including all categories, and the 99.5% figure by only including the C and D categories. The 99.5% figure does not include, for example, many Greek textual variants that were the primary choices the Biblical scholars who translated the NKJV, including the longer ending of Mark, and the pericope of the adulteress. As for myself, rather than try to say which set of scholars is right, I simply want to report where trustworthy scholars are not certain or disagree. That is why I included in the 97% number instead of the 99.5% number. The 97% number includes all variants except those with very obvious conclusions.

So the committee that put together the current Greek text used in modern translations gave a 97% or the 99.5% estimate of certainity depending on how you count.

That does not say anything about the Genesis creation texts. What I said before is that the Hebrew texts have remained the same with only a few minor changes over the centuries when comparing to the Dead Sea scrolls and other ancient manuscripts. This whole bet is foolishness that will not prove anything.

That argument of the many different versions of the Bible therefore you can not trust it is not a good one. No other ancient document has anywhere as close to as many copies as the New Testament. With so many early copies spread all over ther Roman world errors in the writings can be tracted. Scholars believe the Greek text used for the modern translations is very close to the original text. There is quite the science and research involved in this. The majority of of those different versions have simply typos. Being a religious text means the scribes were extra careful in copying. And because of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, it has been shown that even though there are not many old copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew, the Old Testament was accurately copied except for a few minor changes that crept in. So this "fallible text" is actually very likely close to the original text.

Microsoft is already using a whiite space network in Kenya to bring 16Mbps broadband powered by solar panels to towns without electricity.

XBMC is a "software media player and entertainment hub for digital media".

SDL is Simple DirectMedia Layer and "is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer".

"Wayland is a computer display server protocol and a library for Linux implementing that protocol."

SDL stands for "Simple DirectMedia Layer" and "is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer."

Lightning Hybrids is a small company in Colorado that makes hydraulic hybrid systems. They started out by wanting to make passenger cars, but soon realized they needed to focus on vehicles that do a lot of stopping and going, like buses and delivery trucks. That seems to be working for them. At least that is how I see and remember it. Passenger cars are not ideal. Vehicles that stop and go a lot are a better target.

We are the problem. Global security or security in general will always be a concern. There will always be someone who comes to power who will want more and will create weapons of mass destruction. It is the selfish part of human nature, and we are technologically advanced enough that we can destroy ourselves. There is no solution. No philosopher king or scientist can save the day. The problem is us.

My big concern is that in the future someone will abuse the system and use the data gathered to for their own advantage. It is a huge temptation. Think of a future president running for reelection getting the best of his opponent by using this data to his advantage. Or a federal employee using the data to get even with his or her Ex.

The "Do Nothing" Congress did something by asking the ITU meeting to do nothing. I think they found their niche.