Well, for one, Buzz was the one they shoved down your throat and you had to opt out of, and was a bit of a privacy debacle.

Wave was the one that you not only had to go looking for, but you had to request an invite which took weeks to arrive (or you had to know someone who had a free invite they could give you).

So "opting out" of Wave is technically not possible. You have to go looking for it.

Buzz was largely considered "Wave Lite" by many of us who used Wave before Buzz came out. It's a bit more social network and a bit less collaboration, though there is significant overlap in the functions of the two.

Conversely, when you have a probe billions of miles from Earth, with no hope of ever physically retrieving it, and something weird happens at a low level in an onboard system once in forty-three years, the only thing you can do is make assumptions. If it happens again, you can talk about it being symptomatic, but there is still probably nothing to do.

Tipping in restaurants is traditional in America to the point where waitstaff actually make a significant portion (even the majority) of their income from the tips. The minimum wage for waitstaff who get tips in the US is set significantly lower than the minimum wage for the rest of the working population.

Leaving a very tiny tip (a penny is more traditional than a dollar) shows that you didn't forget about the tip, but you put some thought into choosing an amount that really expressed your feelings on the quality of the service.

Perhaps the same people that convinced us that "there must be human life everywhere, like on Star Trek" on "millions and millions" of worlds was the same guy who told us there'd be flying cars.

I know what the movies have said for so long...isn't it *possible* we're alone?

Our existence looks like quite a long-shot; 90% of the stars out there don't have so much as terra firma, much less ATM machines.

Every time NASA foists a planet "Just like Earth" it comes with a 15G gravity or really, really, really bad hotel service. :)

But it's more than that. For man to evolve and even *know* other planets exist, for example, they have to be on planets far enough from black holes AND in places where the view is not obscured.

What will happen to science as we get better and better sensors and we can't find anyone/thing suggesting intelligence? Will it survive?

No, that is a popular stereotype put out by Libertarians (which are not conservatives, they're economically conservative but socially liberal). Conservatives think of liberals as being delusional, and liberals think of conservatives as being deceived. There's no reason for either side to want to be lumped together.

Sounds like a singer, ever hear of a Momsen Lung?

--

Florida Journalist Completes Sentence.

Yeah!

Same reason xWINDOWS is so screwed up, to taint Microsoft! YEAH!!!

Technically you have to raise prices by 50% to make up a 30% loss.

Vs. their idea on including silent letters in words... :p

they are in the biz of selling others the idea, while they themselves keeping a screen of "plausible deniablity" up so that when things eventually crash they can say "oops".

Incidentally, no one calls it "McMurdo Ice Station". In fact, calling it that belies a misunderstanding of its setting, which is within an ice-free chunk of volcanic Ross Island. An "ice station" sounds appealingly clean to me...more like South Pole. MacTown (its nickname) is one of the dirtier (albeit dry) places I've ever been.

I hear that large companies are recruiting people with BS's in physics cause those people know how to crunch numbers. Just cause your degree is in something unrelated to your field doesn't mean it doesn't help you in whatever field you do go into.

Your view is long on optimism, but short on history.