This makes it into my 'ten funniest jokes on Slashdot ever'.

To understand how clever the parent's joke is, you have to reach the third sentence in the article linked, which you will first believe to be a misdirection, and then realize it to be an insider joke like they have loong liked to pull on each other.

Of course, if you're from 'there' or 'the other place', you might have caught it at once.

The Wall Street Journal is part of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch holds a grudge on Google, and wants Google to pay him for linking to his stinking articles.
Editorial distance between the owner and the minions running the newspaper?
None

I came to Slashdot day after day to read the COMMENTS, on interesting stories and topics, but the comments.

Because the community filtered the idiots, the corporate shills (and they are relentless), etc. to let emerge comments that I could read nowhere else: a spontaneous comment by Steve Wozniak, INFORMED comments, about copyrights issues, like NY lawyer for example, people at the top of the game. Informed and intelligent comments by scientists, or really gifted amateurs.

Not a vigorous debate for debate sake, a sophisticated debate where you learn about issues.

It's all about the community, and fighting entropic forces attempting to parasite it.

It's all about the COMMUNITY, and having its best members come back, the one we want to read, because most have left.

I am hopeful from what I read here and wish us all the best of luck.

I do. 'Big History', to begin with, is so ugly a term and reminds one so much of Novlang that it is scary. World History is fine with me, or is too 'liberal'?

Otherwise, your post is insightful. You point out how these ugly things are forced upon unwilling public institutions.

Summary says:
"The battery would add about 100 kg to an existing Tesla car's battery weight."

The article summarized says:
"According to Tzidon, the new battery technology can store enough energy to take a car 3,000 kilometres with 100 kilograms of aluminum-air batteries. For comparison, the Tesla Model S battery is estimated to be more than 500 kilograms."

Sigh...

After reading Slashdot for many years, I am coming back after two months of not visiting and what do I see? Another anti-Google posting using all the power of the anecdotal... This is a non-event, and Google will change track in this case as soon as they are pointed out their mistake.

I am not sure if I will have the courage to go through today's list. I remember this place as one where I could read intelligent comments, but those who used to make this place what it was have now almost all left...

Not only a dupe, but one of the first remark on the discussion was that, not CREDIT CARD COMPANIES already track your every purchase and visits to specific stores, and have done this for a long time.

This is a forum of well-informed people. We would want to read about Google other things that what the PR firm hired by Microsoft spews out day in or day out.

Either that or I am going to find another IT news forum. I want to read informed opinions, and while we still find interesting discussions here, it is becoming far and between... Anyone else having this feeling?

Granted, and Sokal and others do very well here debunking the spurious claims of Fredrickson and Losada. However, let's not be carried over in the same generalities about human sciences that surrounded his original hoax, and let us by reminded of the Bogdanov affair, where two clowns managed to get PhDs in physics and in mathematics, and published articles in peer-reviewed journals IN THOSE FIELDS on topics such as what happened just after the Big Bang (see Wikipedia article: Bogdanov Affair). Neither you or I would claim that these hoaxes invalidate in any way, serious or otherwise, our current understanding of physics and mathematics... but they are indeed a nuisance and more seriously, can be used by interested parties to cause damage in public opinion.

I would really wish to read Alan Sokal on the Bogdanov Affair...

I am interested in issues of privacy, and considering that Google has left China over such an issue, the original story sounded quite implausible to me.

I have read the original document that was supposedly leaked about PRISM. I still have to be convinced of its authenticity.

Even more so after reading a quite sensible account of this whole story, gathered by eight contributors to the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

If people are led to believe that everything we do online is available to the NSA in the manner described in the supposedly leaked document, it will be much more difficult to lead campaigns about real threats, like SOPA, etc.

Atom jokes are fine, but the parent is the first interesting or informative comment on the whole thread.

The "making of" linked at the end of the movie is well made and stimulating. I particularly liked this comment from the director of the project:

"If I can do this and I can get a thousand kids join science, rather than go to law school, I would be super happy".

Quite right. Furthermore, and this is where I find difficult to follow Hawking's spiel, if we entertain the dream that we will eventually find another place to live, this will be used to keep the lid, the already quite heavy lid, on efforts to properly address environmental issues on planet earth.