They didn't say how they are taking the top 5%. Is it the top 5% of the nation, the city, district, or tower? It's like hearing an interest rate without telling you how it is compounded, completely worthless data.

Also another complaint with the article: applications have always referred to more than just 'a self-contained piece of software installed on a PC or Mac'. All other operating systems have applications as well.

iOS and Android are operating systems.

Thank you.

iphoneapplicationlist.com I was waiting to see Bazinga at the end of your comment. Where is it?

Another theory is that maybe said people have studied what happens when people assume the worst and try to remedy the situation, instead of letting mother nature do what she does best, survive. Just read up on Yellowstone and the government trying to fix the problems they thought existed.

All through these comments I repeatedly see twice the surface are of texas, and 1/3 a percentage point. Yet these numbers really are for less then what is imagined. Surface area, were people measure their exitence is different then say an oceanic fish. Who isn't worried at all at the surface area. He cares about the VOLUME of the water. Where he actually lives. The Volume of the Earths oceans, 1.37 billion cubic kilometers, estimate from http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/SyedQadri.shtml. The volume of the garbage patch is near impossible to say. The average depth of the ocean is 3.8 km. Say that this microscopic debri penetrates the surface of the ocean at 3 meters, close to 10ft, highly over estimated. so you have an area, 0.33% of the surface. You will get a contaminated amount of ocean water 2.6 x 10^-4. Also written as 0.00026% of the water. So that would actually be 177000 people, of the 6.8 billion to put it in perspective. So using these numbers, if all the life in that stretch of area was contaminated and sick, it would be like having 177000 people in the world sick, at the same time! Wow this rates up there with the most significant find since they found out eggs are bad for you, or did the end saying they were good?

When dealing with the government most problems have gotten better when left alone. Look at Yellowstone, it was all messed up for decades until the decided to leave it alone. The Earth is quite good at maintaining homeostasis without the help of mankind. Whenever we do try and "help" we find out 20 years later that we caused more problems, and it should have been left alone.

Who quotes wikipedia as evidence? And then back it up with estimates that have a difference of 20 fold?

Hey sure, why not! Oh wait they have done that already! http://ecoble.com/2007/11/18/250000-bottles-amazing-recycled-mexican-island-paradise/

Unfortunately that math is based on plastic being produced at an exponential rate, to go with with the populace. Yet even in the past 5 years consumer plastic is dropped drastically, and really only seen in commercial fields, at least in the USofA. And the majority of these fields, recycle the plastic, medical being the biggest user.

I'm Sorry that is Sad. When you title something great pacific garbage patch, doesn't actually make it that. The gpcp can not be walked on, as this picture shows. And is way out in the middle of the ocean, not near land on some delta. FYI Plastic beach is not gpgp. But thanks for trying to look special!

You Sir get an A for the day!

Hah! My wife's old college friend got shot in the face on the 405 a few months back! California gotta love the unexpected!

When I was in the ARMY we trained on a video game system that had normal ar15's connected to gas lines that would simulate a round being fired. The whole wall in the trailer would be the target zone, close and far distances. This would also have wind, barometric pressure, and temperature so you know how to adjust your fire. And this was back in 2003, so how exactly is this new? This system would also use live ammo, but the ballistics gel isn't a fine surface to project onto.

Unless there have been leeps and bounds in smart card technology in the past couple of years I think this is an overstatement. A few years back I made most my money buying blank smart cards, copying the information from the satelite TV smartcards, changing a few places in the hexidecimal coding, and selling full unblocked TV. Of course we would tell the user to remove the cards from the boxes at night when the companys would do system checks that fry any unauthorized cards. And the cost of such equipment, $49.95. Not expensive and on about average, 15 minutes of work. If the UK is using the same format, that would be a real easy "hack".

My favorite part of this article, was the response by the officials. Excuse us we need time to come up with an excuse, err.. a response to these allegations. We could just say, "Yes we care about the protection of your identity, but first I need to doublecheck the validity of that statement. Thank you."