I love that this was tagged as insightful. God bless slashdot!

We've come a long way, baby.

I think more to the point is the size of the bit of the universe we can observe and then process the results of observation for. Something this big is rare for us to see from Earth as it stands and so without an improvement in technology or increase in resources spent on star-gazing it'll remain to be an impressive feat to find another of this size.

..Of course if we talk of this without taking our earthly abilities into account it just turns into a game of looking for an extremely large needle in an infinite haystack.

Anyone could find something if it's that big! Wake me up when they find the smallest one! :p

As a girl first and foremost (who happens to be described as transgendered by virtue of having a penis) I really wouldn't be happy about this if it becomes widespread.

Of course the reminder (or being "outed" if it's better at detecting gender types than people around) is an issue but what really pisses me off is this imposes the belief that somebody's gender can be determined by appearance alone.

This is a huge issue to people who suffer from the consequences of ignorance. Society daily makes things harder for me purely because of this assumption that I'm not a girl because I have a dark upper lip.

Ideally it'd go on clothes so that if you're wearing jeans it'll advertise jeans.. but that's far from perfect as men's jeans (and the ads for them) are different to girls. I could see me avoiding areas with these as carefully as I avoid tube stations with ads for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (you can't imagine how acceptable the looks I get next to one of those are.)

It sounds like a petty thing but people in my position really don't need any more shit to deal with.

The last line or argument of a proof isn't always (or usually) the most important one as far as insight or bigness of ideas is concerned.

If we simplify the proof process to each of the contributors writing a few lines of the complete proof for a conjecture, with the person who defined the axioms as the first contributor and the Perelmans as the last, there's no reason to measure Perelman's additions as any harder, more important or more impressive.

Seriously, why not study that if you're looking for secret codes? It's very likely there's some stuff that nobody has figured out in there. I know Dodgson isn't as influential as Plato by a long-shot but in terms of the information the writers provide, what Dodgson lacks in ahead-of-his-timeness he makes up for in being relatively recent. I'd say both are about as relevant (somewhere around the "kind of" mark..)

If you say obtuse it doesn't sound like Nietzsche at all, but love him as I do, he is prone to a good ol' exaggeration. I don't recall reading Nietzsche's thoughts on Plato but it sounds well in line with his sense of drama to me!

I wonder when they'll start selling fake replicas that are even more affordable?

Ryanair will do it for £5 plus taxes. Unfortunately oxygen is an optional extra.

I'm a transgender female and wrote a blog about the issue from my perspective. I hope some of you may find it interesting.

http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/next-gender-gaming

All netizens are liars.
-E-pimenides