Oops, please ignore my embarrassing "cubic kilometre" miscalculation... it's about 850,000 cubic metres which of course is nowhere near. However (unless my brain's really malfunctioning today) I think I got the proportion of US usage right -- it was about 56 million cubic metres last year.

No, they're the same thing subjected to different degrees of refinement. Everything from balloon helium to the highest-grade purified lab helium come from the same limited sources.

The volume of the Red Bull Stratos balloon is close to a cubic kilometre. Factoring in the practice jumps and aborted launches, I'd estimate that this project could easily be accounting for over 3% of US helium consumption this year.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask why hydrogen is not a viable alternative. There are probably some good, valid answers to that question, but I don't think that yours is one of them. And we do need a longer, louder discussion of how helium usage should be prioritized: it's neither renewable nor (in many applications) substitutable.

If you want to de-politicize Free Software and call it "Open Source", go right ahead. And if you then want to lambast the inventor of Free Software for not following you down the apolitical route... go right ahead, I guess. But don't expect to be taken very seriously.

Amen. On a bike I can see, hear, feel, and smell the world around me. I feel as though I'm part of the world. If I see something interesting, I can stop and check it out without worying about traffic flow or parking. In a car I'm in my own little coccoon, cut off from the world. The mental-health aspect of biking is probably at least as important as the physical-health aspect.

Unfortunately it's an experience which is intrinsically hard to glamourize, and there's little financial incentive for anyone to do so. I suppose you could say that governments have an incentive, in terms of gradually improving the wellbeing of their citizens, but that kind of long-term thinking does not seem to be popular.

True, but remember that here we're not considering the set of all rejected papers; we're considering the set of rejected papers which were subsequently accepted. That probably removes from consideration a large chunk of the just-plain-awful ones.

I find it particularly entertaining because Germany seems reluctant to recognize foreign doctorates -- i.e. if you got your PhD outside Germany, you may not be allowed to call yourself "Dr.". The implication is that a German PhD is somehow intrinsically superior. The politicians seem to be doing a good job in dragging down the superior branding.

Maybe this explains the "Dr. Dr. Dr."s and "Dr. mult"s I've heard about: writing three PhDs is probably easier if you're copy-pasting :-).

On closer inspection, I'd never use the purchase option either. "Researchers cannot print out the articles"? Fuck off, ReadCube. Fuck right off.

I'm having trouble seeing the innovation here. Seems as though the differences from the current model are

(1) Articles cost $11 rather than $30, and
(2) There is a rental option for $6.

So, a reasonable improvement perhaps, but hardly a paradigm shift. It's still paywalled, it's still expensive. Open access seems more promising, despite the well-known obstacles to its universal implementation.

(And personally I'd never use the rental option, but maybe there are people for whom it makes sense.)

Nah, it's more like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzxQgRbTesA

Microsoft can fulfil Nokia's every wish! There's just one small catch, though...

(In this analogy, Elop is the cum-streaked turd which summons Microsoft in the first place.)

I get the feeling the MS partnership was completely or largely a top-down decision forced by Elop. The peons presumably knew they were shafted from the start but didn't have a say in the matter. Elop presumably knew they would be shafted, but doesn't care because he gets well paid until Nokia is a gutted shell, at which point he hops off, buys a few yachts, and walks into the next cushy job -- perhaps with his old buddies at MS.

*Everyone* saw this coming, that's the tragic thing. The past 18 months have been like watching a slow-motion train wreck.

Not that I'm an expert, but as far as I can tell from some brief Googling, the Samsung Series 7 is:

1. Made of metal not plastic,
2. Not an ultrabook,
3. Cheaper than the Air.

Specs appear generally better than the Air since it's a "full" laptop rather than ultrabook. More memory, more pixels, faster CPU, 1TB HDD vs 128GB SSD on Air, and of course thicker and heavier.

I'm basing this largely on specs here and here.

I agree entirely. I've never invented a programming language, because I'm always far too busy posting on Slashdot.

Woah shit is that the time? Got to go catch up on my web comic reading for the day.

That's a really interesting approach. Are there any examples of it in the wild? I'd be keen to see what one of these narratives looks like.