Unless the particles aren't the message but the means of communication. Maybe they form some kind of field mechanic communications bridge to enable instantaneous communications?

We should consider something like this instead of probes like Voyager. Eventually we'll find a way to use fields or lasers as a communications field conduit that enables immediate lagless communications. Someone is probably working on this right now. To some extent the teleportation technology we've seen for communications could use such beams as guidance and accelerators that cut down lag. So maybe instead of thousands of years the lag is like a day or an hour or a few minutes.

A darker side of this could mean that the existence these focused particles could prove someone is communicating with their homeworld from Earth.

The film Kpax used this kind of idea as his transportation method, which was a pretty awesome film.

Makes for some awesome sci-fi even if it's far fetched!

It would be really cool if we discovered these particles were actually packets of alien data. I mean if WE found a new civ and we decided to contact them I wonder how they would adapt to our technology. Wouldn't it present in a kind of similar way?

Because if these particles are pretty special, which they are, then can we not assume they might not be naturally occurring?

Mobile industry is afoul with moral hazard. They simply don't care about their clients because they only want to get paid once and then milk the clients for information.

Google's Android phones flat out REFUSE to uninstall Facebook, for example.

Users do not have control because we're experiencing what Oligarchy feels like.

Some of us remember what it was once like when you wanted to buy something and they would kiss your ass and make you at home while you were shopping. If you had any problems they would bend over backwards to serve you. That mentality is dead in the goods & service industry.

We are approaching the dusk of the psychopathic corporation era. Nothing after that folks. Thanks for playing.

JS is totally impulsive for a site designer. They just decide to add so many different bells and whistles that they don't have enough time to do penetration tests on any of it. They grab source code from ANYWHERE and tack it on their site. Nobody checks that stuff.

Run NoScript and there are tons of sites calling 10+ different JS blocks.

Moral hazard.

Hear, here!

This doesn't surprise me. Few developers truly understand how many vectors JS opens up. Just KISS and let's move forward.

JS fanboys are ruining everything.

Didn't mention global warming here. I was discussing the link between subsidies and energy security. However, solar power lighting is much less expensive than kerosene powered lighting, so renewable energy helps with that as well in addition to opening up the possibility of cell phone changing.

Energy is a lot like roads an bridges in the way it promotes prosperity by its very existence. One can imagine a world where energy does not need military protection or special tax treatment, but it would be a world where national rivalries in power and economics are much subdues compared to the present. We're not there yet, but a rapid transition to renewable energy could probably get us closer more than just about any other move. Let's make the switch.

Yeah good luck with that.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... "New Scientist reports that, faced with global warming and potential oil shortages, the US Navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater by processing seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into kerosene-based jet fuel.

More here: http://blogs.discovermagazine....

Should work at Fukushima or reactor decommissioning or this present clean up be done by people over 60?

The article indicates he was no longer able to go hunting. That seems like a loss.

His treatment sort of worked. He ended up with a lot of bad health effects, but kept alive until he was 75, eleven years later. You read about old people living near Chernobyl and now Fukushima. Perhaps their age related decline leads to fewer ways for radiation to be lethal. The quick onset of leukemia seems to affect children more, for example. http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/late...