came here to say that. also smarties and rock candy.

And as a bonus, you can "invent" stuff and get rich.

That's quite amusing.

But the real problem with all this travel-back-in-time-to-kill-hitler business is that Hitler didn't invent facism or scientific racism. It's quite likely that those theories would have kept gaining traction around the world if Hitler hadn't come along and started a war that made them look so bad.

I thought this would only be a problem for people who are afraid to muck around in their bios. The situation is that even tech-savy users can't turn this shit off?

Are you talking about Ontario? I think it's been up to the ultrasound practitioner's discretion, but in light of recent studies, some are advising their workers to not give out the information. I hadn't heard that it was illegal, thougth.

It's a conundrum, though. If abortion is legal, it has to be legal for everyone, for all reasons. Perhaps more effort should be made to make sure certain immigrants know that around these here parts, we appreciate our daughters.

But if it continues, well, it can't coninue for more than a generation or two. What's a sure-fire way to make sure your son abandons your sexist culture and marries someone from a different background who wont abort her female fetuses? Create a lack of women in your culture for them to date.

It has focus-follows-mouse, but you have to go into the gconf-editor, which most probably doesn't come with ubuntu anymore. But once you do enable it, it still sucks because they've done that Mac-wannabe global toolbar thing, so when you move your mouse up to the tool-bar for an application (which is at the top of the screen now) the mouse hovers over another application, and the toolbar at the top is no longer for the application you want to do something with. It'll make you want to smack someone.

Fortunately, there's XFCE. It has proper focus-follows-mouse. Just use Xubuntu, if you want to stick with an Ubuntu derivative.

I only became a scientist so that I could be the one in control of a futuristic dystopia. Mind controls, genome engineered slaves, soylent, high-tech games to the death. I was really excited!

But maybe that's just me.

Agreed, and add to that the death penalty. And then there are the statistical measures like income inequality, literacy rates, incarceration rates, and other "quality of life" indices.

If we could shame the US by listing the crappy countries it has so much in common with, in these regards, I think it would have happened already.

I think you're missing a point of why so many people are so upset; there's no trial planned because the admitted killer has not been arrested.

If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in this:
Interactive Starry Night

Actually, in the case of plasma confinement, and the break-even point, the bigger hammer is exactly the solution. Tokamaks smaller than ITER weren't expected to reach break-even point. They theoretically have to have a minimum size in order to get the densities needed.

Agreed. I've never seen anywhere where someone is claiming that inertial confinement will one day provide us with energy.

A dumb, or feature phone, can come with all the programs you need, but doesn't have a good avenue for installing any other arbitrary program you might want.

Smart phones are more like computers that way; they're meant to have programs installed after you get it. You're not limited to what the manufacture shipped the phone with.

Not really opposed but, unless there are resources there worth using to further space exploration, it just seems kind of dumb.

If we can build a habitat on the moon, why not just build it farther out in the solar system, where there might actually something that hasn't been studied to death?

Going to war to stop killing. That's a really bad idea, especially in this case. If I have a relative in Iran who is on death row then, presumably, I have other family in Iran as well. A war would put them in great danger of dying as well. How would that help?

In addition, more people in the west really need to realize that most Iranians don't like this Islamic regime. But they are trapped in it. Threats of war (or, god forbid, an actual war) would just boost the strength of the regime. People there may not like it, but they prefer it (as anyone would) to invasion by a foreign country.