As far as I'm concerned, an extra 4" of screen (with attendant bulk, weight, and battery life reduction) would be a liability rather than an asset. Same goes for Windows. I realize that my needs are not everyone's, but I suspect there are a lot of people out there who don't want to lug a 15.6" machine around.

Lance Armstrong is innocent. His business case is based 100% on being a non-cheating cyclist: if it ever leaked that he'd taken any kind of performance enhancers, it would all be for naught.

The point, surely, is not that I am necessarily a cryptographer, but that the source is available to those who are. It's not necessary for every user to independently audit the code, because the skilled individuals who do audit the code can then communicate their findings.

"But why trust the skilled individuals?", you may ask. Answer: because I find it unlikely that all the world's cryptographers are conspiring to keep quiet about any vulnerabilities they find the code. At any rate it's a more sensible strategy than "assume that Zimmerman is both infallible and incorruptible".

... and then corrected by a +5 informative annoyed nerd in the comments. Good thing you don't need my last modpoint, because I just spent it on someone who pointed out that

This kind of shit is the reason I keep coming back to Slashdot. The editing's always been hopeless but there's gold in them there comments.

Hmm yes, good point. So I could try to do some basic physics and figure out the equivalent volume at ground level, but given my track record thus far, maybe I'll just get me coat.

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.)