Flametoad

Okay, here’s the setup: China to Use Weather Control at Olympics
and the money-quote:
If rain clouds are expected the Weather Modification Office can call on 1,500 staff with 30 aircraft to drop chemicals into the clouds to force them to drop their water early.
A further 37,000 part-time staff can fire additional materials into the clouds using 7,113 [...]

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I find it hilarious–yet utterly predictable–that third world school kids are using their free laptops provided by the One Laptop Per Child foundation to view pr0n.
I’m only surprised that they skipped LAN parties and DOOM and went straight to the hard core stuff.
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Popularity: 16% [?]

You may remember back in March I posted a video called Shift Happens. The authors have updated it with new statistics, new music that doesn’t infringe on someone’s copyright, and re-edited to be less “alarmist”. Personally, I thought the alarmism in the first version was appropriate. You don’t wake people up by playing it safe. [...]

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Jerry Pournelle has posted a short article on his website about how China is changing the 200 year status quo in the steel trade. It is certainly an article worth reading because we’ll be seeing the same thing repeated in many other industries. For instance, remember that for all you read and hear about how [...]

Popularity: 18% [?]

You may remember that back on April 9 I wrote a short essay called Is Cory Doctorow Bad for E-books, which was about the growing trend of giving away e-books to fuel print-book sales. This essay garnered a few comments at Teleread, which was in turn picked up elsewhere. That was interesting, as I had [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]