A ground-level detonation, as would have happened in Goldsboro, is far less destructive than an air burst

You have got to be kidding. A ground burst is the worst case scenario, it would produce a horrendously radioactive plume that would spread far beyond the affected area of an air burst.

The problem with sending people to Europa. Well problemS. In random order

• 1. This is Jupiter space. Heavy radiation levels, therefore heavy shielding on everything. Complicates everything.
• 2. How thick is the ice on Europa? 3 km, 5 km, 10 km? Good luck getting a submersible through that and back out again.
• 3. Two years there. Two years back. What is the likelihood of failure of components?

It is just so dodgy. I would love for humans to go to Europa, it would be amazing. But you have to be realistic. This not like a trip to the local shops to buy a litre of milk. It is across a good chunk of the solar system, a long way from help, in an environment that is totally inhospitable. No explorers before have had to face an environment as harsh as space. If a canoe split a leak, you could float to an island or whatever, live off the wildlife, catch fish. Not going to happen out there. A tiny crack in the hull and you are dead if it is not patched.

Verdict: scam.

... a video I was watching recently. A youtube vid of one of the story arcs of Babylon5, the Earth Civil War. Something about this statement just brought this to mind. Not stating that this as serious but well it does have dark overtones.

ctrl-shift-t or on macs command-shift-t will re-open the last closed tab. Interesting but hardly revolutionary. I think someone must have been hyperventilating.

Come on editors, that should be "a Homesourced IT Worker". There should be an "a" before a consonant sound and an "an" before a vowel sound. Just google it, here's an example.

Wish I had mod points. :)

Yeah. I'm also 61. I used to drink about (translation: over) a dozen cups of coffee a day via our work coffee maker machine about 10 years ago. Potent cups. Except after a while I found they no longer affected me. I was not exercising enough, getting overweight, ridiculous working hours, stress ... and the coffee didn't work anymore. Eventually cut down, but still all those risk factors caused a bit of damage. Much better now but only occasionally touch coffee, my body simply rejects it.

However, I think the parent was just exercising his sarcasm rights.

This is GENIUS! This is one of those ideas that must be implemented.

So, a script which lasted for 3500 years, stopped being used, and is undecipherable because it did not survive is the basis for arguing that written languages have survived longer than 5,000 years? Show me a written language that is/was still in use 5,000 years after its creation.

I presume we are then talking about phonon manipulation. Which is pretty cool (sorry for that pun) but at the moment I can't see a lot of applications. Should be able to do lots of interesting photon like things but much slower. Useful if you want to embed logic in a solid material.

Amen to that. I'm not even an American and I find it depressing.

The H2O doesn't stay around long though, it just rains. Disturbances in the amount of H2O are gone after about 10 days. CH4 decades. CO2 centuries.

Having tried Win8 I found I actually like it. A lot. More than Win7. My first impression was that it was better than OSX but that might just be me. I haven't liked a Windows OS since NT 3.51. Most people complaining are wimps ... oh noes no Start button ... gees. Learn a new way. I mean really anyone who frequents /. should be the kind of person who likes exploring a new software environment.

What are my own preferences: I like linux mint. I honestly don't understand what people like about OSX, it is ok, certainly slick and shiny. But I did not expect Win8 to be this good, blown away. Fucking MS did something right for once, holy shit. Still not giving up my linux machines though.

I'm not sure how many actually read the article (yeah, I know /. ... what am I saying ... just read the fucking article guys), clearly you did read it. In summary it says that because we don't know what the actual threshold is, as a hard and fast value, then people hedge their bets and no matter what the value actually is the result is disaster. If the actual value is known then people cooperate and success is achieved, sadly that is not the scenario in the real world.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I really like Windows 8. A friend even said, unbelievably, that he found Win8 more useful than Linux. Not sure about that part, but it is very beautiful and easy to use. I am using it on my aging desktop. Looks amazing. Of course I miss the free stuff but ah well. So, taking that into account the only reason I would think they got rid of him would be for issues unrelated to the actual product.