Comment Re:All charity ends (Score 1) 370
Amen. I read a quote somewhere, that said (paraphrasing) making money is a side effect of a good business, not the goal.
Texas Scientists Regret Loss of Higgs Boson Quest 652
MarkWhittington writes "The probable discovery of the Higgs Boson particle is greeted as bittersweet news in Texas. Had the Superconducting Super Collider, at one time under construction in Waxahachie, Texas, not been cancelled by Congress in 1993 the Higgs Boson might have been confirmed a decade ago, some believe, and in America."
Comment Re:Um ... What? (Score 1) 120
1/17th the radius of the Earth, actually.
Comment Re:Don't get your hopes up... (Score 1) 120
Silly rabbit! Dinosaurs can't talk.
Comment Re:Dune (Score 1) 726
I read Dune when I was 14. Four hundred pages of "Dune" and 600 pages of "The Oxford English Dictionary". Great book, and I learned a lot of stuff while trying to wrap my head around it, but it's the opposite of "light reading".
Comment Monica Hughes (Score 1) 726
Monica Hughes is what got me hooked on scifi, when I was about 10 or so. "Crisis on Conshelf Ten" and "Earthdark" were my first taste, and are still on my shelf somewhere. I devoured all her other stuff that was in the school library pretty quick after Conshelf. Easy to read, but there are some levels to it, that you start to notice as you get older. I don't know if her stuff is still in print though. FWIW.
Comment Re:links (Score 3, Insightful) 544
Got any links to Wikipedia proper? Or do we consider sister sites under the Wikimedia Foundation all together for this discussion? (I read the summary as referencing only Wikipedia).
Comment Re:Difference between stated intent and real inten (Score 1, Insightful) 828
That's what Venezuela claims. In reality, the government prefers a citizenry armed with sticks and rocks when the inevitable revolt comes to pass.
"Hugo Chavez's government states that the goal is to eventually disarm the citizenry."
Well, that was refreshingly honest of them. I was expecting something about having to protect the children from the capitalist dogs, or the dogs from the armed children, or something like that. Rock that iron fist, Hugo! (And to the Venezuelan People, Good Luck in your revolution, now that you know, unequivocally, where you stand).
Comment Dual booting? (Score 1) 809
So, this is the end of multi boot menus that include Windows 8, I guess?
I envision a box with two separate physical boot devices: one with a Windows 8 signed bootloader, and one with a bootloader that lets me choose another OS to boot. The second one may or may not be signed with the Windows 8 key. In any case, Red Hat's won't be able to chainload Windows 8, because only the first stage will be signed with the Windows 8 key.
Did I miss anything?
Museum of Engineered Organisms Opens In Pittsburgh 54
qeorqe writes "The Center for PostNatural History is a museum and research library about organisms that have been created either by genetic engineering or selective breeding. Included in the collection are Sea Monkeys and GloFish. From the article: 'One of the cool things about natural history museums is that they show you how nature has changed over time, adapting to volatile conditions and extreme challenges. And nothing is more volatile, extreme, or challenging than the human race, so it makes sense that there would be a museum to chronicle just how much we’ve messed with plants, animals, the climate, and in general the world around us. The Center for PostNatural History, opening this week in Pittsburgh, is that museum.'"
Comment Re:I disagree, but (Score 1) 505
hmmm... if the quality of the prose was lower then, and Tolkien's prose hasn't changed in 50 years, wouldn't that imply that it's the standards that are lower now than they were then?
Comment Re:Tolkien's prose / What about Frank Herbert? (Score 1) 505
Agreed. I read it Dune for the first time when I was 14, and I don't think I've ever used a dictionary so much, before or since. I think I would call Dune the my watershed point between juvenile and adult science fiction. The whole series is definitely what I would call epic, much more than Tolkien IMHO.
Comment Re:Science and Research (Score 1) 140
Many of the problems we face as a society will not be solved by buying a solution from the local supermarket, they will be solved by a crazy person who believes that the future can be better and has the resources to "waste" working the bugs out of his crazy vision
Dr. Evil, is that you?
Comment wow (Score 3, Interesting) 140
Holy fuck! Mach 20? I scan slashdot regularly, but I somehow missed this story developing. I think the really cool thing about this is how the onboard systems allowed it to make a controlled splashdown. I bet no pilot in the world could deadstick a landing like that from that kind of speed. This is probably the beginning of the end for the fighter pilots.
"Woot" Becomes an Official Word 146
tekgoblin writes with a quick bit about new words in the COED. From the article: "Concise Oxford English Dictionary is the smaller but most widely recognized derivative of the official Oxford English Dictionary, which is celebrating this August its 100th anniversary. To celebrate, the lexicon published its 12th edition today that adds more than 400 new entries – many of which reflect the technological vocabulary found in today's society, like 'woot,' 'mankini,' and 'jeggings.'"
