Stereotypes aside, can I just point out that the overwhelming majority of I-know-what's-good-for-you self-righteousness in these comments isn't coming from the vegans?

Hmm...I don't think this necessarily follows. Suppose each universe contains on average 2 simulated universes. Then each level has twice as many total universes as the level above, and the probability of a randomly chosen universe existing on the bottom level is 1/2. The bottom-level probability increases rapidly with the average number of simulations per universe.

Unsolicited notifications are never acceptable and I have uninstalled every app that has ever bugged me with one. As the other reply asked, why not include this information as a "tip of the day" when the app is invoked, rather than shove it in the notification bar where important stuff goes? Why do I need to know something about your calculator at some random time when I'm not even using it?

Imagine if your .o object files were more malleable than text, now realize that they are, but you haven't developed the tools to do so.

I'm on a horse.

Or they just automate it. If the automation is effective, that sucks. If the automation is ineffective, that sucks, too.

I think it's because (snowflakes being quite small) all sides experience nearly identical conditions of temperature, humidity, whatever-else-affects-crystal-growth at nearly identical times.

Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft were kind of awesome back before they (quite correctly, I guess) put all sorts of restrictions on what kinds of things could be scripted. I used to *own* the level-19 battlegrounds with a warlock and an addon I wrote to keep track of enemy targets and optimally distribute my various curses and afflictions. I just ran around mashing the spacebar like crazy, because among the few restrictions was that every action had to be tied to a hardware event.

I also earned 10,000 gold in the auction house with another addon of mine that helped me find and relist underpriced stuff. At that time, 10K gold was an eye-wateringly large sum. It's probably pocket change now...I've been out five years.

Man, I really did feel like a wizard with arcane and hidden knowledge. It was great. I've often wished for a game where programming was the way you do magic, but only that once have I gotten it. I guess a key part of the experience was that hardly anyone else could do it, or knew how I was doing it, which is how magic is often imagined to be.

I have a brilliant design for electronics that stop functioning when exposed to extreme heat. I call them "electronics". I'm willing to license my technology, which is applicable to other resources too, like clothing, houses, and enemy combatants.

First of all, this post is aimed not at the engineer from the article, but at some of the posters to this story and others like it. What is it about physics in particular that attracts so many uneducated crackpots? It seems to be the sweet spot for cranks on the XKCD spectrum--they don't go all the way over to math, and try to promote their pet tensor analysis theory ("this is how we really should compute the induced map on the cotangent bundle!"), and even less often are we treated to their "revolutionary" theories of hydrocarbon structure or ribosomal protein synthesis.

Nope, they gravitate straight to physics. Is it that concepts are (relatively) familiar, like light, gravity, time, particles, etc? Is it Star Trek? Must drive physicists nuts.

...I should gain a couple hundred pounds?

So? Summary says they're "getting better at saying 'no'". Let me exaggerate the numbers a bit to make the point clearer: If 10 people ask me today and I say "no" to 5 of them, and then tomorrow 1000 people ask me, and I say "no" to 990 of them, then okay, I've said "yes" twice as many times today as I did yesterday. But I've most definitely gotten better at saying "no".

Oh, shit, the irony...

"Public Exclusively Library For Digital Media Proposed"

Seriously, it seems like not a day goes by without some [b]glaring[/b] editorial failure, be it spelling, grammar, or an [b]obviously[/b] botched copy/paste. I'm sure that I speak for many when I say that although I read Slashdot for the comments, the atrocious, lazy editing is still offensive.

Get your shit together.

I've heard or read a number of exchanges in which an interviewer asks a Pharm rep why their company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The reply is generally of the form "Because vaccines aren't profitable". The interviewer asks for further details. The rep explains that a vaccine cures the patient, or prevents them from even getting sick. This means that you sell them nothing, or maybe a few doses of a medicine, and then you make no more money from them. The profitable drugs/treatments are those that maintains the patient as a patient, requiring ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives.

[Citation Needed], indeed. Can you point to a real live Pharm rep who actually says this? I mean, we all know that's essentially how it works, but I might invest in torch and pitchfork stocks if someone official is actually on record...