I wasn't sure myself, so I did a little research: you can get 300 minutes (there's typically no difference between local and long distance minutes in the U.S.) and unlimited SMS and data on Virgin Mobile for $35/month (although they throttle your data after 2.5gb/month). That's about $10/month less than I'm paying right now - I'm on a shared minute plan which comes out to roughly the same amount, except my data never gets throttled. In addition, the phones available on prepaid plans typically aren't subsidized at all, so you'll be paying anywhere between $200-600 for a phone.

I just checked my data usage and I apparently average about 330mb/month. So, for me it might make sense to switch providers after my contract is over, but we'll see how my data/calling usage changes over time.

But I got off topic and didn't really answer your question: looking at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375644,00.asp, most plans are going to be around $30 for 1000 minutes and 1000 sms, although a lot of the plans either have very little data included or have high prices if you want more data. I didn't realize you could customize your cell phone plan this much - if you only use two of the three (calling, texting, data), you can get a pretty cheap prepaid deal.

Although, to be fair, so am I. I used to think texting was stupid and I wasn't going to pay the outrageous rates for it. Now, however, I'm on a plan that has unlimited texting included so there's no harm in it, and I (like plenty of other people, I'm sure) HATE talking on the phone. If I can send someone a text message telling them something quick, why spend the time calling them and actually having to talk?

I was with you until you had to add the "First Post."

I noticed that too, and it bothered me enough to comment. From the synopsis, "pressing tiny metallic pyramids into the surfaces" makes it sound as if they're doing hardness testing. I took a quick look at the actual scientific article and yes, they're doing micro- and nanohardness tests.

and I'm sure I speak for more than just myself when I say that. The first year or two of Digg's existence were actually alright, when interesting articles were actually posted on the front page. It degraded rather quickly, however, into a reeeeeally shitty aggregator. When I finally stopped going, it was almost completely top-ten lists and links to "funny" pictures.

Good to know, thanks. I'll take a look if I can't find my original version anywhere.

The scored game ends at 2020AD, I believe, but you can continue playing afterwards. If I remember correctly, there's a popup that says something along the lines of "Would you like to keep playing? Scores will not be recorded from now on."

Man, this really makes me want to go back and do this with my old copy of Civ II. They also mentioned Alpha Centauri, which always seemed to be too intensive for my computer but I'm sure it would run on what I have now... Oh god, the nostalgia.

Worth it for Psychonauts alone, if you don't have it. I'd never heard of any of the other games but I've been told they're all pretty spectacular.

No.

Before we get a lot of comments saying "what's so good about this?" it's actually pretty interesting. I did some undergraduate research with dye-sensitized solar cells (and am currently a graduate student researching inorganic semiconductors) and the basic thing you hear is that if you can get an organic solar cell to 10% efficient, they will be viable because they're so much cheaper than inorganics. While this may be true, the problem with dye-sensitized cells is, like they say in the paper, that they degrade in a rather short period of time. I saw this first-hand doing research on them - we had to make sure our batches were kept in darkness while making them otherwise the solution would degrade in a matter of hours, and after they were made I believe they only lasted a few months. If you can make 10% efficient organic solar cells that will last as long as inorganic ones (typically 20-30 years), you have a very attractive alternative to brittle, expensive and often toxic inorganics. I didn't see in the paper how long their new cells are supposed to last but anything you can do to make it more stable is going to help.

Am I the only one that was hoping their website was www.org.org?

I apologize, I was hurried and didn't explain myself very well in the first post. You're correct, graphene (and apparently now silicene) has sp2 hybridization, but as the AC reply to your post suggests, it's the fact that carbon is group IV that gives it such interesting characteristics as a 2D structure. As a sidenote, I'd hesitate to assume silicene's electronic properties - silicon doesn't naturally form anything like graphite (i.e. stacks of loosely bonded monolayers) that I know of and since the properties of diamond and graphene are so different and I don't study monolayer materials, it'd be irresponsible of me to say "silicene will have X band gap" etc. Very interesting stuff, though, I'll be interested to see how this develops.

None of those have the same crystal structure as carbon or silicon, which both form diamond lattices due to being group IV materials. As someone who works with silicon/gallium arsenide semiconductors and crystal formation, I think this is pretty exciting news. There's a large difference between observing something and making it work the way you want it to, though, so my guess is it'll be a while before silicene can be properly studied, let alone used in commercial semiconductor devices.

I don't know anything about networking, but that all sounded REALLY sexual.