Biggest thing is that the satellites are burning more manouvering fuel to stay in orbit. Their lifespan is reduced significantly. The effect on global warming is tiny. If anything this is probably an effect of global warming, though that would be an interesting investigation.

I wonder that the Amateur Radio low power operators have to say about the "skip" signals? That is when a radio wave gets caught in a "corridor" up there and "bounces" in there a long way before coming back to earth. The compression should have some sort of effect on them.

Why oh why should I read a book about what I do at work :)? Oh, and I did read this and it is very good. The real world conundrums are much more splayed out in the morass of code, but this gives one a good feel.

When one looks in the past at great politicians, there is one common thread, the ability to speak. Not just talk well, but to passionately enflame the audience with the ideas being presented.

This is true of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, where he held them mesmerized and changed the course of the US in less than 10 minutes. Churchill held Britain together with his words. There are fascinating speeches that changed the world, so why not someone who knows delivery becoming a politician?

The "Governator" or Clint Eastwood are excellent examples of what an actor can do.

In it's simplist form, politics is the art of getting people working together. This is what happened at The UN. If the "real" politicians were to pay attention, it could change the world.

This harkens back to the bad old days of 5 1/2" or (SHUDDER) 8" floppy disks. Yes, I am dating myself (heck I STILL have card decks and paper tape programs to scare the youngsters!). There are wider considerations that one should work through:

1. Archival/backup for when the darn thing goes bad
2. Inventory of what is where (duplicate detection?)
3. Simplification of clearing off the card

There are others, but this is enough. You have to make one major assumption: You are going to lose this card, and it will be at the worst possible time. Whether it is to the washing machine, or just plain wearing out of the card itself, you have to prepare for this.

So that being said, there are good programs out there for achival. So what would you all recommend?
I have used Adobe, but what else is there?

Also can we widen this a bit to indexing and archiving other forms of data, such as source code, music, text documents, and so on? Yes, Google has given us really nice tools for finding the stuff, but....

First, you MUST use a cleanser that leaves nothing behind. If it is anti-corrosion, it leaves something behind and that will conduct. Perhaps not very much now, but later it will conduct more as it attracts stuff, and it will. I have found that Dow Scrubbing Bubbles in the can that foams up gets into the components well and using a brush (toobrush works fine) this will clean the board nicely. Then rinse with clean water and place on a warm area with good air movement (a furnace vent, computer output fan area or so on) and let it dry completely. I used to work on pagers for a living and I have resurrected them using this method from being dumped in a "honey wagon" (yep, raw sewage), an oil truck, and other places one would never think of. This always worked.