Interesting...didn't think about that. I suppose what got me thinking of the slush idea was the sheer scale of the environment compared to ours here; the entire moon is frozen. Here's some info on theories about Europa's oceans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

And possibly evidence of slush, depending on how you interpret the word "ductile":

Guess there's only one way to find out. I personally can't wait!

I stand corrected. :)

Bill Goldberg, "Who's NEXT???"

That's all. Have a nice day.

It's things like this that make me think that if there ever was an extinction event like a large asteroid collision or gamma ray burst, I wouldn't feel too bad about it. People create a highly addictive drug. People abuse the drug. People kill each other over purchasing, selling and law enforcement issues regarding the drug. Now people are torturing animals by forcing them to overdose on the drug, reviving them, and repeating the process until they die in order to find a way to combat the effects of an overdose in humans. Am I the only one who sees this as embarrassingly stupid and shameful behavior for the top dogs on the planet? An infinite number of Picards could not facepalm enough to make me feel better.

I wonder if the ice/water transition may be miles of slush, rather than being clearly defined. If so the design in TFA isn't going to work as there will be no ceiling to use as a reference. They'll need to use temperature, sonar, or pressure readings to determine its elevation/depth, all of which will be unknown without sending something else down there first.

Tell that to the guy whose cranium was split in half by a quadcopter a year or so ago.

Cable and satellite receivers have always been poorly designed, slower than molasses, hot-running piles of shit with UI design worse than a PC RPG ported to an NES and more bugs than the Amazon. Anyone have any ideas why this is? With any other consumer electronic device people would rage spike it into the pavement, but for cable boxes it's somehow okay.

I recently cancelled Dish Network for blacking out half the Braves games (in Atlanta, no less) and sent their shit-box back to them. Netflix, TPB and Linux HTPC's all the way, baby.

LOL. Agreed.

Why, with all the plenty of cheap resources, technology, entertainment and knowledge, are people still complete assholes? There must be an asshole gene that natural selection has yet to make dormant.

H.R.x Commerce of Any Non Organism Shall Not Require Any Federal or States License

Oh no. It would be the Wild West of selling and buying. Everything would instantly catch on fire, gunmen would roam the streets, and somehow slavery would come back even though the law didn't apply to organisms. The state and central government regularly punish and reward businesses to enforce policy. A shame.

From personal experience, drinking while programming isn't so bad, although the increasing mental and physical clumsiness will eventually become a problem. Smoking weed while programming, on the other hand, is asking for trouble. If you're a designer brainstorming before coming up with a rough design document, weed's probably an ally in many ways. Programming, though, God help you. I suppose it adversely affects the ability to base one logical proposition upon another, which is generally bad for a series of equations relying upon the results of the previous for a useful result.

While playing games it depends on the game. If it requires the same sort of sequential, analytical processes as programming then you're doomed. If it's just a twitch game with simple goals and gameplay you'll be minimally handicapped. In any case, I can't imagine being high will improve your ability to play a game; just your enjoyment of it.

My greatest regret is attending high school. If I had fully indulged my obsession with computers at age 13 (in 1989) and forgone my high school "education" I would be in Bill Gates' shoes by now, throwing money at schools like it grew on trees. There's nothing wrong with using computers, but there's a big difference between playing Angry Birds and learning to program and reading Wikipedia. Computers are a tool; you can build a bridge or poke yourself in the eye.

For many, radioactive underwear is probably still a good idea, at least for the rest of us.

Well fuck it, just build an inverted spherical solar panel around the sun, crank out some Earl Grey, and blast the fucking thing near the speed of light to whatever starship ordered it. Problem solved.