That is silly. Some old codgers are terrible at programming and only got there because they got in early, then decry that the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of "new generations". From what I've seen, young people are often the most sane (except those from overseas that come because they are cheaper) and have been robbed blind by older generations that pass the buck onto them. Young coders have to deal with all the problems that old people foisted on them because they couldn't solve, as well as management now making all the decisions and lower pay. </end rant>

You are thinking small scale. It's not about the cost to a small company or department. H1Bs threaten to lower wages across the board due to plentiful competition, less ability to move to another company, and allowing company HR to threaten someone else taking your job. Some of the savings then go to board members of large corporations, to political lobbying, and to shareholder profits.

I'm pretty sure they use helicopters and private jets to get around. You ain't going to see them on congested roads if they don't have to be on them.

"The firewall went down, the massive server exploded, and now your information is lost in a black hole. Sorry about that. We might however be able to get a small portion of it back, as it still appears to be transmitting information in high frequency streams on either side. The receiver we placed to get that information fluctuates a bit and might catch on fire, however, so no guarantees."

I followed it up with one of the senior engineers who's worked on this server for years and they told me there was no black hole, just someone forgot to plug in the backup system.

The guys who donate sperm are not all law students or graduates. I would say chances are they will still find plenty of people willing to donate sperm for a "good cause" and to make a couple of hundred quick dollars.

Seriously? A "war on women!"? I know this is /. but have you even skimmed the article summary?

Aiming for a future where we use less energy than we do now is backwards. I'm not advocating that making existing systems more efficient is a bad thing at all, but to power things that will progress society will require more energy per person consumed than we do now regardless.

Wireless power requires 60% more base power. The often dismissed as impossible flying cars require at least 1.5MW per person. One day it is not far fetched to think we will replace the microwave with a device that can assemble atoms and completely replace farming, which will take serious power. This is what I think even the solar/wind/geothermal people who don't want to move back into caves intuitively understand is the kind of changes that will occur sometime in the future.

Solar panels belong in space. They are much less efficient than hydro-electric, which is about as efficient as coal, which is 6 million times less energy dense than nuclear fission, which is less energy dense than nuclear fusion, which is only 2 orders of magnitude less efficient than antimatter-matter reactions. Spread out to consumers, solar panels also produces a lot of waste that future generations will have to deal with.

The parent post is correct, but Greenpeace does not dictate government policy in Australia.

Australia has 31% of the world's uranium reservers (the world's largest) and has in recent years declined production slightly (probably due to Germany's and Japan's 'efforts' that increase greenhouse gas emissions across Europe and Japan). Australia does not use nuclear power for energy generation or for military use or for icebreakers or any use other than ANSTO (small research lab that produces radioisotopes for medical use).

Australia could have gone nuclear ages ago, but didn't. Similarly to how it cut space research and plans to build rocket launch platforms, it is a country of little physics achievements that haven't been done by overseas people. The problem is that is also a county full of coal, and with other countries running out of coal, it might well be the place for coal globally over the next 50 years if policy doesn't change domestically.

Already the highest greehouse gas emitting OECD country in the world in the future if the coal extractions can be seen large from space (like tar pits in Canada) then it might become the biggest contributing country to global warming on a global scale indirectly (due to use of its coal and nonuse of uranium, not to mention thorium).

Maybe a generalization, but from what I've seen it is because clever women usually go to the field where there is actually work for them (such as the medical profession) and not claimed 'shortages'. Young men study computing/advanced maths/particle physics because it is interesting and are left without a job upon graduation.

Definitions change with time. Once upon a time the Earth was the universe, until people decided that the stars weren't just stuck up like a sheet in the Earth's sky.

Makes sense to have moons orbiting planets in planetary systems, orbiting stars in solar systems, orbiting galaxy centres in the galactic plane, orbiting super structures (Great Attractor, etc.), and finally you reach a boundary that is the "edge of the universe" with the current laws of physics that we know and love. If this universe is formed by the intersection of 2 or more "hyperplanes" as per string theory, or by other means, then there exists other universes. Hence, the collection of universes is given the term "multiverse" to distinguish it.

Another way to look at it is that it is only $3B dollars per year. For the USA this is pretty meagre spending really and entirely necessary. Many other spending initiatives such as seriously failed wars in the middle east that destabilize the whole region cost way more and don't endear the USA to the rest of the world. The ISS and similar things are necessary, because without them that country would be hated around the world for what it does in other areas and might come to bite it in times of local crisis (i.e. possibility of threats of economic sanctions such as when the Soviet Union collapsed in reverse). Plus you get science promoted in the media and access to space-based research.

Yes, I know. What we could do with is a space based telesope array better than the James Webb, which is yet to be launched. This would remove some of the problems with single lens size limits and light interference if we put it in a good observation spot.

It's funny, but the NSA actually has the best telescopes and has donated some of their old ones to NASA.

These pictures are 6px by 6px. With 30 or so pixels squared you can start to really make out stuff. Compare to our recent Juno probe's view of the Earth Moon system as it passed us on it's way to Jupiter (it will go past us twice).

Thinking about things -- why they happen, how they may happen -- in great detail without actually experiencing them is one aspect that makes us human beings. Thinking about the eventual fate of the universe and our current home is something that we should all do at some point.

It also is several notches above the other rampant speculation without experimental verification here and lifts the profile of /. a bit from where you have to shovel down to the level sometimes.