Comment Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score 1) 339
Why not? Botany Bay sounds like a nice name for our first Mars base.
How Lasers Could Help Fingerprint Conflict Minerals 31
New submitter carmendrahl writes "Diamonds might get most of the media's attention, but they're not the only minerals being sold to underwrite militias. Two chemistry teams are developing portable instruments that can detect an elemental fingerprint in mineral ores, to verify that the samples don't come from militia-controlled mines. One technique uses laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (PDF), which vaporizes a small amount of an ore sample with a high-energy laser pulse, and detects elements in the sample by their characteristic light emission. The other technique couples the laser ablation to a mass measurement and a scanning electron microscope."
Comment Re:Demystification (Score 1) 462
If a German politician wants to end a discussion quickly he will just mention that the Nazis did it that way.
The German version of "Think of the children/what about terrorists"
Except that in Germany too, "think of the children" will get you a lot of people agreeing with your position - whereas mentioning Hitler, the Nazis and the 3rd Reich in a way that could be interpreted as positive or comparing contemporary political figures to Hitler and the Nazis will heavily damage or even end your political career (see Herta Daeubler-Gmelin and others).
Comment Re:Heil (Score 1) 462
There's a bunch of pictures of Hitler with children because he was a politician, not because he loved children...
Except maybe with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Comment Re:Just withdraw from Germany. (Score 2) 215
If I were to open a US based site, as a US-only business (or not even as a business) and some users uploaded german-copyrighted material - could I be sued in Germany, just because Germans could reach the site?
Yep. German courts (just like courts in many other countries) assume that if Germans can access it, it's in their jurisdiction.
That would mean anyone putting up a site on the Internet could be sued in any country in the world.
That's the status quo. Of course that doesn't mean that foreign courts can always enforce their decisions against corporations, but they can certainly convict the company and ask the country where the company resides to help them via mutual legal assistance treaties (which exist between many western countries).
In theory, an Iranian court could sentence you to death for uploading certain videos to Youtube. And if you plan on visiting far away countries after that, you better make sure those countries that don't have extradition treaties with Iran...
Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 148
When a fictional universes has been around for a long time, the opinion of the creator becomes less and less important and the stories themselves and the fictional facts therein become more important.
It's the same with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, where many fans desperately wish that Lucas would stop meddling with their SW universe and leave it to the authors and writers who can capture the feel of the universe much better and have a lot more knowledge about what's happening in that world.
Comment I stopped reading at (Score 4, Funny) 114
I stopped reading at "Swarm of Laser Wielding..." when an image popped into my mind:
A big bad asteroid hurtling towards our little blue planet. Then the camera pans around and we see a huge number of little dots. Flying closer, we see a huge swarm of frickin' space sharks swooping down towards the asteroid, shooting their lasers at it while Bruce Willis, riding the lead shark, yells "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." I'd pay money to see that.
A big bad asteroid hurtling towards our little blue planet. Then the camera pans around and we see a huge number of little dots. Flying closer, we see a huge swarm of frickin' space sharks swooping down towards the asteroid, shooting their lasers at it while Bruce Willis, riding the lead shark, yells "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." I'd pay money to see that.
Comment Re:Space combat games (Score 2) 83
It would be ground breaking to have a "real" flight simulator / space combat game built into an MMO.
Close Approach By Asteroid 2012 BX34 55
An anonymous reader writes with news that asteroid 2012 BX34, 11 meters wide, is in the process of passing within 60,000km of Earth — about a fifth of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. At that size, the asteroid would pose no danger even if it hit the Earth's atmosphere.
Comment Re:Gears need a redesign (Score 1) 144
in this case I think simplicity is more important.
Especially at -40C with strong winds and pretty thick gloves on.
Comment Re:A bike to the South Pole? (Score 1) 144
I'd compare her to Byrd. Wilkins was the first to use aircraft on the continent, but Byrd was the first to fly over the south pole.
Comment Re:A trifle surprising... (Score 1) 116
Wasn't there even a story about archiving know-how in companies a couple of weeks back that mentioned a company that ran and maintained an old plant but had no idea how it actually worked?
Comment Re:Jeff Goldblum (Score 2) 368
most everyone in North America in this economy thinks he has to shop at walmart at one time or another.
Fixed that for you
People in Germany for example don't have to shop at Walmart, because Walmart doesn't exist anymore in this country. Fittingly because they failed to adapt to the new environment.
Comment Re:what? (Score 1) 175
Nice 10nant quote.
Comment Re:Or the other option is... they're just wrong (Score 2) 442
"2nd Thermo is a mathematical law"
It is a mathematical consequence of some models of the universe. Other models don't bring it as a consequence. Remember, we don't know how the universe behaves, we just have clues.
Sometimes I wonder if we are just like the people in Plato's Allegory of the Cave - staring at the wall, watching the shadows move and then try to come up with scientific explanations of the shadows' behaviour - without knowing what's really going on because there's so much that we can't see/measure yet.
