Here's an exercise: count up how many of the posts above begin with "I'm not a mental health professional, but..." or "I don't have any scientific data to back this up, but..." followed by some theory about how autism is overdiagnosed/not real/etc. It's amazing how people will lambaste (rightfully) a woman--famous for showing her vagina and advertising electronic cigarettes--for claiming without evidence that vaccines cause autism, and yet turn around and promulgate some other ridiculous claim about autism, all while ignoring 1) the clinical evidence that exists, and 2) the interpretation of that evidence by those most qualified to interpret it. Pot, meet kettle.

Dude, take like 20 seconds to do some basic research on what you're talking about: https://secure.worldcommunityg... "What's the answer to the protein folding problem?" - "42, now give me my money." "Um, everyone else says it's 38, so no, I won't give you your money." When have you ever done an experiment just once? Also, with regard to hashing, I'm trying to think of another system that's hard to do and easy to verify....Oh wait, like every differential equation known to physics.

This is the main problem I have with Bitcoin. Here we have a brilliant opportunity to harness computing power to solve a socially or scientifically relevant problem, and instead we waste it on solving random meaningless math problems. In my book, an ideal cryptocurrency would use that computing power to solve a protein folding problem, or a plasma physics problem, or any other number of things. You wouldn't need an artificial upper limit like BTC has, because in generating a new block of currency, you'd actually be creating something of value to society. Riecoin approaches cryptocurrency from this point of view (albeit still with an asymptotic limit on the number of total currency units, and only applied specifically to computations of potential counterexamples to the Riemann Hypothesis), as does IBM's World Community Grid to a certain extent (albeit without the ability to easily and securely transfer the virtual cash generated), but I'd really like to see it take off.

It seems like the logical conclusion to this would be to have each avatar exist in its own instance. If a computer can simulate one avatar, it can simulate multiple copies of that avatar. E.g., in the simulation, you could say, "Gee, I haven't seen Alice in a while; I wonder what she's up to," and the computer would simulate Alice (with certain features built in, such as "Alice can actually stand to be around me"). You'd never actually interact with the real Alice. Prima facie, this is a good thing for both you and Alice: you both avoid an undesirable interaction. Creepy? Absolutely. Will it happen? Given that most of us hate uncomfortable situations (hence the word uncomfortable), I don't see how it couldn't.

Now that's just plain wrong. First off, the pentacene molecule imaged by the group at IBM was imaged using atomic force microscopy (AFM), which uses a nanoscale piezoelectric cantilever to measure the force between the tip of the microscope and the substrate. The IBM team realized that picking up a single CO molecule with the tip allowed them to have an atomically sharp tip, thus giving them the drastically increased resolution apparent in that paper. This paper presents an STM method, which uses the current caused by electron tunneling between a tip and substrate (which dies off exponentially with distance between the two). The major breakthrough is this: scientists working in this field have known for quite some time that the electron tunneling was a function of both the starting state (tip state) and the ending state (substrate) of the electron. The problem with this is that the tip state up until now has only been known very vaguely. At the atomic level, the tip of the STM is in general a poorly defined blob of metal. What the researchers in this paper have done is pick up a CO molecule to act as the tip of the probe, just like the researchers on the pentacene paper before. The advantage now is that we can model CO quite well quantum mechanically, so that we have a much better idea of the starting state of the electrons. Of course, there will be some interaction of the CO with the metal in the tip, but nonetheless, this method provides us with a much clearer picture of what the electrons are actually doing when they tunnel from the tip to the substrate below. This is the reason that the researchers were able to get so much more information out of these experiments than previous researchers. /rant

If my conservative friends are to be believed, you guys don't get out of bed for much of anything.

It's pretty clear that Taco doesn't even read /. anymore.

You know, I'm not one to don my tinfoil hat too often, but that's exactly what I thought when I read the "call to arms." Either that or it's a honeypot.

Mod parent up.

You're wrong. To be listed first author is generally an indication that you did the bulk of the work for the paper. Middle authors are usually minor contributors to some extent, and the last few names are usually the professors who employ the students/postdocs.

The solipsists would say that you can't have electrons without consciousness.

I noticed that too. Replace "linguistics" with "the space program" and watch how many slashdotters go supercritical.

You're totally right; we should ban carbon dioxide. But if you're waiting for the government to effectively regulate that, I just have one thing to say:

*puts on sunglasses*

Don't hold your breath.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Random audits at checkout. About every 10th time or so that I used the U-Scan at my local Stop & Shop, I was randomly selected to have 5 random items in my cart checked out by a clerk to make sure that I had scanned them. Takes about 30 seconds total, and not having to wait in line at checkout easily saved me at least 20 minutes at the grocery store per visit.

FTA:

What!?!? I'll present a similar argument. See if you can spot the flaw: I observe that white bread gets moldy after I open the package. Therefore I conclude that wheat bread doesn't get moldy after I open the package. She followed the outsiders (self-described, no less ["Yeah I'm a nonconformist, nbd"]) to determine the fate of the non-outsiders. Wow.