I don't understand the argument that there is a danger that hypersonic weapons will be developed to carry nukes. That weapon already exists, it's called an ICBM. You might have heard of them. ICBM reentry vehicles are already hypersonic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile] . Some reach peak speeds of mach 20. That's one of the reasons why they're so hard to intercept.

Also, BTW, the Russian's already have hypersonic anti-ship missiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-800_Oniks, mach 4.5) so apparently the goal of this treaty would be to stop us from developing weapons that already exist? Or just maybe to prevent the U.S. from developing weapons to match Putin's stuff? Sounds like a worthy goal to me. Maybe we should step this up to block the development of all "chemically powered weapons" (ie, guns and missiles) because they sound dangerous as well.

PS: The fact that hypersonic missiles are hard to intercept doesn't make them any more of a "1st strike weapon" than what we already have.

"Energy Policy, International Journal of vehicle Design, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Population and Development Review, Contemporary Economic Policy all look as though they have peer review"

All of Lovin's articles are Policy Papers, not scientific or technical papers. All his publications are geared towards politics. He does not now and has never written any technical papers (that I'm aware of) which is why his assertions about "Don't worry, it's reasonable to build this super-grid" are not reasurring. There is no reason to believe he has any detailed knowledge of how the grid works beyond a laymans idea of "it distributes energy". Hand-wavium is not serious research. He did not present a serious model of how it would work. Even basic questions about actual peak/average/minimum power generation using readily available data goes unanalyzed. Power distribution? What's that?

It's not that properly disributing renewable power can't work or is a bad idea but how difficult it would be to achieve near 100% effectiveness is a hard question he's not seriously trying to answer. A little storage and little backup power goes a loooong way to making the design a lot easier. His desire to upfront declare such things unnaceptable smacks of fanatacism not practical problem solving.

"The breakdown of U.S energy research and development subsidies reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to sustainable energy sources."

Given that you didn't bother to provide any kind of link for that information, I'll give one for 2010 (which is much more relavent). http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/ For 2010, and the percentages are . (FY 2010, Millions, just for R&D):

Coal 663
Gas & Oil 70
Nuclear 1,169
Renewable 1,409
Grid 222
End-Use 832

Total energy-specific subsidies and support including: Direct expenditures; Tax Expenditures; R and D; DOE loan guarantee, Fed & RUS Electricity (FY 2010, in millions) are:

Coal 1,358
Natural Gas & Petroleum 2,820
Nuclear 2,499
Renewables 14,674
Smart Grid & Transmission 211
Conservation 6,597
End-Use 8,241

Which means Renewables and Conservation do quite well.

America’s middle-class is in “demise”. Uh-huh. Data from the Census
Bureau show that assertion to be wrong. Reckoned in 2009 dollars
(that is, adjusted for inflation) the percent of households in America
that are poor or lower-middle-income is going down while the percentage
that are upper-middle-income and wealthy is rising.

In 1975 the percent of U.S. households that earned annual incomes of
less than $75,000 was 80.6; in 2009 the the percent of households that
earn less than $75,000 annually is 68.4.

For each of the Census Bureau’s five income categories below
$75,000, the percentages of households earning these relatively modest
incomes have fallen, while for each of the two higher-income
categories the percentagesof households earning incomes in each of these
categories have risen.

This data also underestimate the improvement over the past few
decades in ordinary Americans’ economic well-being. The reason is
that these data do not account for the decrease in the number of
people living in the typical American household; nor do they account
for the increase in the portion of employee compensation paid in the
form of fringe benefits.

Every major enviromental group in the US opposes reprocessing nuclear fuel...so yeah, that is a problem for doing reprocessing in the US. There are individual environmentalists who disagree, and good for them, but the overwhelming enviromentalist opinion is against it and they have a lot of lobbying power.

You said, "But if I signed my real name to this, I'd be on a terror watchlist by the end of the week and you and I both know it. ". So you sound pretty sure. Saying, "How can anyone know" is more honest but it runs contrary to what you originally wrote.

Schizophrenia is not curable.

The one thing that's been amusing about the whole Manning case is how consistent his Defender’s argument has been. From the very beginning, the idea that "Manning is Not Guilty" has accepted as axiomatic, regardless of whatever evidence was provided and all arguments had to end with that conclusion.

At first, “Everyone” knew that Manning was just a scapegoat for Wikileaks and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug.
Then as evidence came out show he had released documents, well of course he was just a whistleblower and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously working for the Man.

When it turns out he released tens of thousands of documents he hadn’t even read and thus can’t be whistleblowing, then The Defenders invent bizarre new legal doctrines about how since the documents went to WikiLeaks not a foreign government, it’s not illegal. Or Manning is a Journalist! And so no laws apply to him, after all the legal expert Assange said so. And anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously A Fascist Thug.

Now that Manning’s own lawyers are giving up on that argument, let’s go to claims of mistreatment to get him off.

When that fails I’m sure some of the older claims of insanity will come back. Or we’ll go to the claim that HE created the Arab Spring, not the millions of oppressed Arabs who’ve suffered for decades. Nah, they’re just a sideshow to Manning. Or another favorite, Governments shouldn’t be able to have anything secret at all. That’s why the Defenders all worked so hard to defend Scooter Libby. Free Scooter Libby! they cried. And of course there is the strange issue ofis this all proof that Obama is actually A Fascist Thug?

Stop stop stop. If you think that electronics simply "stop working completely" when they overheat then you need to stop pontificating on a subject you don't understand. Also, the machines were made by ES&S, not Diebold, so statements by a Diebold CEO seem oddly out of place. So apparently your "Occam's Razor" answer is to randomly scream "CONSPIRACY!".

PS: as an aside, Diebold never been found guilty of any attempt to manipulate votes, just general incompetence, and the CEO statement wasn't about Diebold voting machines.

There are lot's of books on HDLs, but to get good results for non-trivial designs you also need to learn how to test them.

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Testbenches-Functional-Verification-Edition/dp/1402074018 is a great guide to this.

Mexican drug cartels regularly threaten & kill reporters who talk about cartel violence. That's why you don't here much about it:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/world/americas/mexico-journalist/index.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/16/world/la-fg-mexico-narco-censorship-20100816
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/23/140745739/mexican-drug-cartels-now-menace-social-media
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicanisima-latino-politics-news-and-culture/2011/09/mexican-journalist-killed-for-using-social-media/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/20/mexico-newspaper-drug-cartels

PS: This is a well-known fact (I don't live in TX but I knew about it) and is actually pretty well covered by the regular media, but somehow retech wants to blame it on Buuuuuussssshhhhh. That's an impressive display of logic & research on your part retech, I look forward to more thoughtful analysis on your part.

People on slashdot always laugh their asses off when they read about normal people over reacting to things like computer viruses (should I wear gloves when touching the keyboard?) but then do the same thing when reading about drones.

Planes have been around for over 100 years and the laws covering them have been around for almost that long. Drones are just planes, they're covered by the same basic set of laws that planes are covered by now. OMG, somebody might fly over my house and take a picture of me naked! Can I shoot it down? Don't they have to give me the flight plan before it can cross my airspace.

Hey, guess what, planes can fly over your house RIGHT NOW and take a picture. Why are your panicking now, it's been a possibility for decades. And the police? Didn't you ever notice those police planes & helicopters that have been flying for decades? What the heck do you think they've been doing. Yeah, they're watching you. And of course RC people have been using video drone planes as well for years. Sheesh.

No they don't have to give you a flightplan. No you can't shoot it down. No you can't blind it. No you don't own it if it crashes on your land (although you can get compensation). No they can't film you frolicking naked in your yard & sell the video.

"2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing)."

The owner's have protested about OWS multiple times. The Police have simply stalled in their actions.

"3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it."

City Ordinance's also make it illegal to camp there. So they're clearly violating that.

Look, the reality is that if I or any other Joe Schmoe just showed up at a NY park, setup a tent, and said we're protesting _______________ and plan to stay until ____________ is achieved, the police would have you out within a few hours, at most. Far from being singled out for unfair treatment, OWS is getting especially kind treatment. The idea that they're peacefully protesting and therefore whatever they do is automagically legal is absurd and 99% of the people advocating that on slashdot would never want that made into law. Would you want peaceful anti-abortion zealots to be able to squat indefinitely in any clinic they don't approve of? Can I setup a camp in front of Old Faithful in Yellowstone because people don't respect The Bears properly? Can I and 100 friends setup camp in your house until the US government "does something" about Australian mistreatment of aboriginals?

Having a right to assemble doesn't magically make all other laws irrelevant, just like Freedom of the Press doesn't mean I can steal paper & ink to put out my newspaper. It certainly has never been interpreted that way in the past and even the people who support OWS today don't really want it to change the laws. They just want the laws changed for them only. Their attitude is, "I like OWS, so whatever they do is legal."

..