Thank you. As a foreigner, I applaud your idea and look forward to legally receiving my weapon when I enter the airport. You weren't thinking of discriminating, were you???

I was in line in Toronto the other day, listening to the gate agent trying to help a passenger. The passenger needed to make a connection and wanted to get his seat assigned. Trouble was, the passenger had made it into Canada from the US aboard an airplane - without any ticket at all. Not lost ... it had not been issued in the first place. Awkward for all concerned ...

In my travels, I have been through many international airports. This will make US airports look a lot more like those in other countries, where the enforcers carry guns - often automatic weapons. Might as well use the way they do it in India - military at the airport entrances, and you don't get in unless you have a ticket for that day. Obvious Military visibility makes it much easier to control the population.

Most, if not all, existing reactors are built on fairly old technology principles. Things have changed a lot, in terms of both economics and technology, since the '70s It should be possible to build new nuclear facilities with sufficient safeguards based on the lessons that we have hopefully learned by now.

Funny how quickly we forget. Sun was in the tubes. IBM was about to buy them, for considerably less that market value. Sun turned the offer down and a week later Oracle picked up the ball. (It's even possible that IBM encouraged Oracle to go for it, for of mutual benefit at very high levels.) But SUN WAS IN THE TUBES, and had months (at best, low single-digit years) left to live. I'm betting that Oracle bought Sun mainly to keep Java - a significant factor in Oracle's future - alive. As well as simply trying to keep the IP from being sold by the Bankruptcy courts. (It's even possible that IBM encouraged Oracle to go for it, for of mutual benefit at very high levels.) But now that they have the IP, they need to be able to use it. If the community dithers so much that the entire release is put on hold, then there is no commercial value in the new feature set. My take is that we, the developers and the community, shot ourselves in the foot by our lack of direction and even a certain amount of anarchy. Oracle has taken steps to get things moving again, and now we don't like it. Having worked for Oracle in the past (I left in 2002), I can sympathize with the ex-Sun'ers who have a heck of an adjustment to make. But it ain't the end of the world, and even I - as a card carrying pessimist - see some benefit in Oracle having the Sun IP and stack. In balance, I prefer that Oracle has Sun - over the bankruptcy courts disposing the assets (and our future) piecewise.

I heard a lot of moaning about the amount of revenue the airlines lost. Yet I constantly hear them moaning that they make virtually no profit at all, because their expenses are so high. Does this mean they really lost next to no money, because the expenses were no where near as high as they would be had they been flying? I wonder what the actual real honest losses were.

Next time this happens, the governments should give the airlines an option - passengers get to choose whether they want to fly at no penalty, but let the airlines fly IF airline agrees to pay $1M in fines AND CEO spends 1 year in Jail for each and every death resulting from the decision. That way those who are willing to risk it, can go on. And the 'C' levels are being told to make an intelligent, rather than profit-driven, choice.

Based on which assumptions? Most cultural archeology goes back only a few thousand years. Are we absolutely sure that the technology 'way back when' wasn't devastated by the dramatic drop in population? After all, some stories of mythical Atlantis tell of some fantastic capabilities ...

... Hut! Ah geez ... don't tell me you forgot 'Hut'

Still seems like 'lipstick on a pig' to me ... if we make the outside pretty enough, maybe they [the dummies who pay money for this sh..] won't notice what's inside.