And Blink is based on Webkit, which is based on khtml. MS bought Spyglass Mosaic in 1995, twenty years ago. It had been in development longer by Microsoft by a factor of ten. It isn't Spyglass's baby anymore.

Edge isn't practically bad on standards. We aren't in the early 90s anymore. I haven't encountered many differences between Edge and Chrome or Firefox. If anything, I've run into trouble because Safari won't implement certain web standards.

More volatile climate in the short term as Artic Ice recedes faster. In the longer run, warmer winters than by Global Warming alone due.

That is not feesable. It take years to be trained to fly in a spaceship - whether the lifting body like the Shuttle or Dream Chaser, or a capsule such as Soyuz, CST-100, or Dragon V2. You have to build not only the rocket, but a tower to carry the crew to the top of the rocket along with an arm to get the astronauts into the vehicle (which is not compatible/spacecraft). Escape systems need to be installed. It's very expensive, and it would never be built without assurance that the demand is there. At this time, there is no market for launches except from NASA or ESA. Cosmonauts would ride Russian spacecraft, Indians and Chinese are developing their own systems, etc. The public demand is too little at this time. Without a long-term contract, NASA is not enough for your proposal.

Indeed! Russia also requires all telcoms and ISPs, at their expense, to install monitoring equipment of the internet and telephones, This project is called SORM (wikipedia entry for SORM). The system was put into place around 1996-2000, but it has been used as recently as the Winter Olympics (source). It is explicitly a mass-surveillance system, so either Putin is lying or he is bending the truth: Russia doesn't pay for it... but by law the telcoms have to pay it. They don't do illegal wiretapping because it is explicitly legal. And you're right, they might not have the ability to store all that data for long periods of time, but you can be sure they are targeting people. And you can be sure they are targeting foreign governments too (of course). Heck, there were several diplomatic leaks at the beginning of the Crimean crises in order to strain US-EU ties. You can be sure that's due to Russia's intelligence services.

#3 was reported to be a hoax. I don't know whether it is true ir not, but you need to be skeptical if your sources. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2311199/Britam-Defence-David-Goulding-Philip-Doughty.html

Am I the only one that read the statement? It seems to me that they are collecting information. In fact McDonald's doesn't deny they attacked him, they only state that their employees denied it. It's an important distinction. Their employees are quite naturally saying, "We're innocent!" while Mann's saying "They're guilty." Mann provided proof that one of their statements - namely that they didn't damage any of his property - is incorrect. But it doesn't seem McDonalds, as a whole, is calling Mann a liar. Here's the statement:

We share the concern regarding Dr. Mann’s account of his July 1 visit to a McDonald’s in Paris. McDonald’s France was made aware of Dr. Mann’s complaints on July 16, and immediately launched a thorough investigation. The McDonald’s France team has contacted Dr. Mann and is awaiting further information from him.

In addition, several staff members involved have been interviewed individually, and all independently and consistently expressed that their interaction with Dr. Mann was polite and did not involve a physical altercation. Our crew members and restaurant security staff have informed us that they did not damage any of Mr. Mann’s personal possessions.

While we continue to learn more about the situation, we are hearing from customers who have questions about what happened. We urge everyone not to speculate or jump to conclusions before all the facts are known. Our goal is to provide a welcoming environment and stellar service to McDonald’s customers around the world.

Interesting that your quotes comes from "Airplane!", a movie starring Leslie Nielsen.

Sorry for all the responses. I asked Professor Strassler on his website. He replied that it's actually a mystery where the Higgs gets it's mass! It's a very good question. All the other standard model particles, except the neutrino, get their masses via interacting with the Higgs field. We don't really understand neutrinos very well, though.

Whoops. Allow me to correct my own post. Not all of the Higgs particle's mass is from the Higgs Field:

In particular, as you can see in Figs. 3 and 7, the Higgs particle itself does not get all of its mass from the non-zero Higgs field — and the strength of its interaction with itself is not directly related to its mass. [There is a correlation, but not proportionality.] This is not unusual.

I wonder how it gets the rest of its mass? That's a good question.

They get their masses from the Higgs Field. The W Boson is like a ripple in the W-Field. An electron is like a ripple in the electron-field (not the electrical field). Et cetera. So a Higgs Boson is like a ripple in the Higgs Field. But it still gets is mass by interacting with that field, like most other elementary particles with mass. Here's a good article that explains that: If the Higgs field were zero.

The DVD-CCA (an organization run by the motion picture studios) sued Kaleidescape for making a personal server where you could upload your DVDs and then play them anywhere in your house. Kaleidescape won their suit, fortunately. Of course the DVD-CCA isn't the RIAA; however, I feel they are cut from the same cloth.

I concur. The export restrictions are frankly ridiculous in this case. If they wanted to, the Iranian government could just send someone to US to download Google's software for free. If Iran can import centrifuges to purify Uranium, they can surely use proxies to download the software directly too (spoofing their country of origin). It's probably a face-saving gesture for he more "senile" members of congress.

Indeed, Google says they worked with US government officials before releasing the software with these restrictions according to TFA. They believe that releasing the software to Iranians will help promote the flow of information and help them exercise more freedom of speech and assembly, as shown in during protests of the 2009 election in Iran. Someone in the US government probably thinks so too.

Wasn't that part of the plot to one of the Star Trek movies?