For whom?

In pondering this, I see many more sinister applications than civilian ones.

Sure you can.

Our politicians are just as corrupt and self-serving as yours. They just have to work within a different framework. Which they must find galling; I bet many wish they were as rich as US politicians.

There might have been long enough for some primitive life, but probably not long enough for oil or other fossil fuels.

Could be okay for mineral resources, I guess.

Doesn't that rather depend on your friendlist?

Actually I can't really fault the musical tastes of mine but I do wonder how many of them are going to fill time after Facebook and Zynga part company.

Problem is that for most people it doesn't gel with their personal experience.

If The Scotsman newspaper runs this news then it's a guarantee that for a couple of days following the article the letters page would be full of "It was snowing here; so much for global warming" and "But I saw ice on the ground this morning" and similar variants.

And yes, I know it's my own fault for reading the letters page in The Scotsman.

Quick, find patents for mobile devices and just add "on a flexible screen" and file a new one.

That's all it takes to get approval, right?

By "people", do you mean the extraterrestrial explorers investigating the remains of a civilization?

If they can push past the Big Pharma sales reps already surrounding them.

I think that defining a limit on how long that you send them into space for is a bit optional.

As is giving them space suits first.

Would that mean if Liz (you know, the queen) ever visited the US, the border people would say "Right, hand over the encryption keys"?

Granted, but the point I was trying to make is that we know there was definitely life on the Antarctic continent before it became glaciated. Regardless of what environmental changes the other places might have gone through over the millennia, we cannot yet be certain that they ever supported life.

Maybe Curiosity will find evidence on Mars but it's going to be a long time until that question can be answered for the gas giant moons.

Hang on...

Does this mean that the raters can view porn and claim that it's on the clock?

Antarctica wasn't always icebound. Once it would have been filled with life until plate tectonics moved it to the south pole. So there is a significant difference to the likes of Mars and moons orbiting the gas giants in that life under the ice first evolved under different conditions somewhere else and has adapted to the changing conditions as the land iced over.

So what they're looking for is evidence of an impulsive, short-sighted species like us.

It will probably be associated with evidence that the species no longer exists.