The text of this article is more or less verbatim from this week's copy of The Economist's article "Nope, just debt." Some citation for credit would probably be appropriate.

"So round, in fact, that if the electron were enlarged to the size of the solar system, its shape would diverge from a perfect sphere less than the width of a human hair." I'm highly skeptical of the entire article. That measurement would be well under the Planck Length. Below that, isn't all geometry and spatial measurement meaningless? I'm asking, rather than asserting.

I think it has to do with transmission of q-bits within memory. It's not for communication between two different people, but communication of a q-bit from one memory location to another, which *would* be a big step forward... but not a step that was communicated well within the article. ^^()

Trademark is very different than copyright. It can apply to a particular branch of products or services. For example, "Apple" is trademarked by multiple different companies that inhabit different economic fields. Nintendo could feasibly argue that they wanted to prevent people from using the phrase in video game related sales and promotions. That having been said, I think it's clear that the true intent is to strengthen control over the use of the words themselves. Trademark strength and applicability has been elevated nearly to that of copyright, and I worry that their goal might be to prevent anyone in any commercial (or even worse, *noncommercial*) field from using the phrase. Interpreted loosely enough, trademark law would allow this. And that would be terrible.

This might be a nitpick, but isn't *all* solid matter shrapnel from supernovas?

Now correct me if I'm being blindingly stupid here, but is Sherman suggesting that because there is a systemic problem with copyright law, that we make more of it?

I personally prefer two spaces when I'm reading, as I find it easier to separate sentences while scanning text. Also, what's with the whole "since we all agreed that tab indenting for code was properly two spaces." bit? I don't believe I've seen that in any of my coding positions.

I'm in Independence, OH, and I we felt it in the 6th floor of my building. At first I thought it was just my imagination due to it being so subtle, but the rhythmic swaying lasted for a little over a minute and was noticeable in pools of water and the office plants swaying.

Am I splitting hairs here, or is this the exact *opposite* of online rights? These are offline, traditional rights that are being violated/reneged on.

Having read through that, all I can think is that the magnetism made people more rational. It said that after the treatment, people were more likely to base morality solely on whether an action caused harm. To me, that is entirely reasonable. If something causes no harm, we have no basis to call it immoral other than some personal preference without citing some higher power (which again, I see as irrational).

This is clearly just a ploy to inflate their own stocks before planet X smashes into the earth in 2012. They don't even need to develop anything at all!

Am I the only one here who is aware of how bad of a problem land mines are to civilians in many third world countries? The response here seems generally negative, but if this technology helps to diffuse old land mine fields, it would be wonderful. Just because it was planted in WW2 doesn't guarantee that it's become inactive or that it won't kill you now.

You're right that they need different energies. If you graph the energies of photons emitted due to heat radiation, they'll form your typical bell curve, with the peak of the bell curve representing and energy level corresponding with infra-red radiation. That having been said... a few standard deviations from the center, you'll see the (very rare) photons emitted that have energy levels corrosponding with visible light. This happens when enough energy concentrates (by random, highly unlikely chance) to create a photon with much higher energy than is typical for a radiating body. It's very, very unlikely for ay given photon, but photons are created very, very often, so it happens frequently, though not enough to create intense enough light to see.

This isn't any kind of new or unpredicted phenomenon. Everything that emits heat emits some light. The chances that the wavelength of a photon emitted by a human being (while giving off normal heat) will fall within the visible spectrum is very low, but given that we emit billions and billions of photons on a regular basis, it's sure to happen every now and then. Get sensitive enough cameras, and you'll see that glow from everything that isn't at absolute zero.

Theory: Making diabetics eat candy every day will result in something good. Proposal: Give us funding so we can feed diabetics candy. Every day.