You know, the Amiga community is probably pleased that the announcement page got slashdotted. I really wish that things had worked out differently, that when Escom AG or even Gateway 2000 bought them, they would have committed to the platform. There were some ideas in the later Amiga OS designs which are only just now showing up in Vista. And, if I'm correct, they pulled it off without the same, disgusting overhead of Vista. I think, to honor the dedication of the Amiga community, we should all enjoy a moment of their perspective on things. Let's not forget where a lot of the Amiga community went, shall we? XFree86 seems to have a few high-profile Amiga developers working on it, or did when it was created. My co-workers, there seems to be a distinct lineage of former Amiga users, and if you run into someone who is a good programmer, it's worth the trouble to ask if they used to program on the Amiga. That clapped out old beastie was really fun to program, and I, for one, miss it.

your handle is "Don't make me think." Very apropos. Come on. Do you know how hard it is to get a supercritical reaction? For one, you need a Curie of material. For two, you need a high-energy explosion, usually triggered with a chemical explosive. For three, it has to be shaped/confined right. Paranoia is an irrational fear. What's an ignorant fear called? I am sorry you saw a tragic truck fire. We call those car-becues out here. However, despite your personal experience, compare the simplicity of a burning fuel source with the math, science, and engineering required to make an explosion with a nuclear battery that is little more than a resistor pop. If you are reading Slashdot, then I hope you have the initiative to go read up on the explosive requirements to make a nuclear bomb. Please, I'm begging you to stop running around with your understanding of supercritical reactions to be no more informed than a Hollywood movie.

Actually, the fundamental flaw was the comrade-tards who decided to turn off all the safety systems and use one reactor to power the other's pumps, in an experiment. They tried it before, but the safety systems shut everything down. I think they were running one reactor at about 6%, which apparently is very dangerous. When they disabled their safety systems, then yes, the graphite-tipped control rods combusted with the steam bubble that built up, then they melted and went boom. If they had built a reactor with a positive reactivity coefficient (or was that negative?) that meant reaction speeds went down as heat went up, such as American/French/Canadian designs do, it wouldn't have gone critical. If they had bothered to build what's called a sarcophagus (concrete bunker) around the reactor, then the very small explosion would have not produced a vent of radioactive material. If they had bothered to build an energy-producing reactor, instead of a breeder reactor (Chernobyl was not a power plant, it was a weapons factory), then really, none of this would have been possible. Still, I blame the comrade-tards, and their hatred for the West. This is why Socialism is so bad. It breeds hatred for capitalism and free will, which includes freedom of religion. Please, American Democrats, think about this when you decide whether or not to re-elect a Marxist for a president. Hear the Warning from Soviet Russia! Or, if you prefer, Read it.

What do you mean were? Three Mile Island is running just fine. You can just see it from the airport in Harrisburg, by the way. Puffy, white steam clouds wicking up around the corner of the river, surrounded by green, happy forests... An eagle glides low along the water, snatches a wayward trout from the river, and climbs powerfully upwards. She turns into the thermal column from the reactor, getting a welcome boost to higher altitudes, as she heads further out towards the hills. Off in the distance, cries from her egrets, nestled in their aery, welcome a fresh meal. Atomic reactors are as American as Baseball and Apple Pie. The simple fact that the French and the Canadians and so many other countries have soundly spanked us in our own inventions, means that the environmentalist whackos have perturbed the spirit of this great nation. I say we shave off $100M from the Cash for Klunkers budget, and spend it on these atomic battery researchers. Oh, no, even better. Let's all write letters to our favorite capitalists, and invite them to invest in the research, for the good of mankind, through the ingenuity of our American scientists.

My rhetoric falls apart if this assistant professor Kwon is going back to China in 9 months and taking his research with him.

Can we at all read the article and agree enough to agree that these are radio-isotope thermocouples, not light/heavy water reactors? Incidentally, has anyone bothered to pay for a copy of the journal and read up? The BBC has not provided things like gravimetric energy density or output voltage. So what is this, a button battery that has a half-life of 30 years, and has a glow-in-the-dark feature? Or something like: "I can't find my car keys! Oh wait, I'll just use my Geiger counter." The scie

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/278826 I think what happened here was that the BBC found the Digital Journal article, got famously sloppy, and reprinted a dumbed down version. I think the Slashdot community needs to do what it can for the astronomy groups in Ireland (North or otherwise). There's been more debate over whether a skit from decades ago was about an Irishman or a Scotsman than discussion of the actual article. Granted, neither article has anything more than several people reporting seeing an explosion in the night sky (apparently while watching Jupiter), but is there any follow-up?

Well, yes there is: http://www.mail-archive.com/meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com/msg77530.html So, a meteorite, or if you read the BBC papers, a "space rock." Let's at least pretend we care about the news, not being our usual, fitful selves.

I thought the guy paid $10 (assuming USD here, sorry), so isn't that 1000 wii points?

Game FAQs. Finally, my kid can leave me alone while I'm working, and not ask me to hit 1up.com or somesuch so he can find out how to get that last missile pack for Metroid 3. Thanks, good tip there. Not that he can't do it with the *old* internet channel...

And to take this line a step further: electrically conductive and useful for fiber optics, perhaps? Talk about signal density.

I would go so far as to say that the power requirements to bombard the surface like that make it incredibly useless to an engineer. It seems to me, culturally, that the physicists of the world are busy creating the obtuse and no engineers are busy chasing what they have done with applications. I wonder if this technology could be made to construct an invisible jet plane, such as what Wonder Woman flew. So the question I have is (to a chemical / mechanical engineer ) is any of this particle research useful, or is it just fun to read? Superconductors do not seem to be making a dent in my utility bills.

So... you're saying that plankton joined some sort of suicide cult?

So, lame question, but if I'm libertarian in my views, but I don't like drugs, think they rot the brain, lead to a life of crime or teen pregnancy, am I still a libertarian? I mean, can I personally be against several things that are currently illegal? What about a law against adultery, as there is none? I need some schooling here.

Remember all the crackpots in Brewster's Millions? I think Bill is searching for a way to spend his billions frivolously, by changing the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. He may also hate Al Gore's insinuation that humans were responsible (not sun spots) for any measurable (note the NASA disclaimer about their forecast) human impact on the earth's climate, enough to actually do it in the first place.

Bill Gates needs to be stopped. I can just see the sky, covered with white letters... Global Blue Screen of Death.

And the union laborers would love to bid on all the construction costs. I wonder what a carbon nanotube welder would get paid per hour. Much less an aluminum welder.

You're right. All that hydrogen, we're back to the whole 'smores topic again. Plus, don't most balloons leak? I can see the sign in front of the base of this thing: No smoking within 50 miles of the building.