Sea lions etc. are just as much influenced by gravity as we are. The problem is in our organs. Whether you're surrounded by air or water on earth, the gravitational pull on your organs are the same (they are, in a sense, always submerged anyway)...

The problem is not the survival of the individual, but our spices. There are experiments on rats indicating that they can't get pregnant in zero gravity...
Citation: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Packing-Mars-Curious-Science-Space/dp/1851687807/ref=sr_1_2 - just read it; highly recommended. On a similar note; http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/#more-417

Anyhow, seeing the rapid drop of energy prices, I assume the solution is near, when energy becomes essential free, everyone gets a jetpack!... ... Oh wait! I am holding the card upside down!

Reminds me; I once read a sci fi - can't remember which - there were a passing reference to other races who had burned the fuel on their planet before reaching spaceflight. They were forever trapped in the gravity well. I assume the same will happen to us.

Not that it changes much. Saving between 0% (robotic probe) and 0.00001% (a crew of few thousands) of the population will not really make a dent, especially when you add the fact that it mission will either be bias towards christian theocracy or aggressive capitalistic pseudocommunism (how much do you trust e.g. China to represent American, if they are the ones "rescuing the race"??). All in all, regardless of the outcome, the probe will not be representative for most .. The rest are left to die...

Goodnight, and happy dreams! :-)

I have a Samsung E2370.. It is essentially a phone from 2003 (so no GPS), build with the power-saving technology from 2010 and added a 2000MAh battery... :-)

I have been fighting a virus on my work the last couple of days. It is calling itself McAfee Antivirus Enterprise. The symptoms is it slows my (aging) lab computers to a grinding halt. The last 3 days it has essentially incapacitating them for more than an hour, every day. I hope whatever payload it needed to update is done, so it will stop disrupting experiments by stalling.

We'll soon need to upgrade an old - but still adequate - dedicated lab computer running a single piece of equipment, just because IT have chosen McAfee...

(fyi; If I take it offline I can only log-on a month or so, then it has to connect to the domain, resulting in a torrent of forced updates. Beside we need to be able to retrieve the data, and last time I needed one, no one had an usb stick!).

This seems to be an old, but reoccurring, question to slashdot! The only thing changing is apparently the AGE of the drives. I predict the next who ask will have a bunch of 15-20 year old drives... :-)

We've had this in Denmark for 5+ years. E-boks.dk - except it is not only government mail, but all official mail. My bank, insurance - even my salary slip from my company. Also I can upload my own scanned documents into the repository, where it will stay forever.

I haven't received anything important in my mailbox for YEARS. I only check and empty it once every second week (only spam).

The system is secured by the national "Nem-ID" (Easy-ID) system, which is a combination of a password and a one-time pad. Also used by my bank (and all other danish banks. I have an old account in another bank. Same login work for both).

It took a while to get it all running smoothly, but it is really nice now it works. Added advantage is that electronic thefts (stolen login details etc.) from banks dropped to almost 0 nationwide since it was introduced.

Reminds me: Somewhere on the internet is a description of how to build an anti-camera cap. Basically a baseball cap with a battery, and a row of powerful IR emitters along the rim. It utilizes that most security cameras can see into the IR, so the camera will gain down and leave the face in darkness, or at least distort it enough to nullify automated face recognition. Can be used during transport, where wearing a cap is not as suspicious as covering the face. ... Or will it soon be so that anyone not instantly recognized will automatically be a suspect? :-)

It is not a novel idea, he mentions it himself at 1:07: an almost 100 year old idea that everybody has forgotten :-)

Quite cool idea though. Looking back at those first "automobile like" designs; cars with legs, monowheels etc. it is not surprising - they were good at thinking outside the "4 wheels on a box" box back then. Probably because the "car" idea was not established yet.

... Not if they are using a laser scanner! :-) For them the monitor is one even surface with the same reflectivity. I am fairly sure the airports I've seen in Europe have been using laser scanners.

If I'm asked what word I think of when I hear "Sony" my answer is "Proprietary formats" and then I would trail of by saying something like "... Wait... that is two words?...".

I actually surprised myself when I bought a Sony PRS-350 eBook reader. For my purpose it is optimal; small (5"), well build (aluminum) good screen. No darn keyboard, supports almost all known eBook formats, and best of all - is fully supported by the open source http://calibre-ebook.com/ eBook management software... I haven't installed Sony's own software... ... I guess their Department of F***ups must have overlooked this...

You are of course absolutely correct... Except you are missing who-is-who: You are not the end-user. You are the product! :-)

Advertisers are the end-user, they pay for your apps, for your Gmail, and for each and every search you do on Google search... Your phone is just an extension of this package.

I still agree with you and think Google have made a horrible implementation in Android: We SHOULD be able to deny an app full internet access. The app should still function, but just get a "not connected" exception. Ads should be presented through *restricted* access to a *limited* number of white-listed servers (also 3rd party). These server can of course go bad, but at least they are easily black-listed.

The issue with Android is it is an advertising platform. But imho with a strangely bad implementation... At least in hindsight.

I like my HTC, but sincerely hate all the programs that "require" full internet access. The reason given is ads, which I am often alright with: I get stuff "for free" that I don't care enough to pay for (games, rarely used tools, apps I can easily live without). The problem is one newer knows what else they use this unrestricted access to. Much of this doubt could be removed if Google maintained a white-list of ad servers (also 3rd party). That way most programs would not require full internet access, but only *restricted* access to a *limited* amount of servers.

These servers can of course be hacked etc. but at least they can easily be black-listed, leaving a more well-defined security risk.

I newer understood why Google didn't implement it this way. Where they trying to "hide" that Android is made to open a new revenue source for them? Trying to make people believe they were "selling" a phone OS? Or did they sincerely not consider the risks of this implementation?

Blocking the ads is essentially stealing from the app developers (or more correctly; depriving them of income). I don't want to do that, but I would like a firewall.

Reminds me of my fingerworks plate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks - "we have reinvented the mouse". Nice, but the same basic problem.

No physical buttons! This is important, because it means that button presses must be made by interpreting the users gestures. And with interpretation comes misinterpretation. Software sometimes guesses wrong. And if it does that in an "unpredictable" or "random" way (I know it is an algorithm, but "random" from the user point of view) the user will (consciously or unconsciously) adapt by change his behavior - i.e. by emphasizing or repeating the gesture. This is annoying.

With a physical button there is no interpretation. You can feel it has been pressed. It may be by accident, but you know you're the one responsible for the click.

Another problem in my opinion is there is no weight. This is usually described as a feature, but in my experience the weight of the mouse gives stability and increases precision and for me this helps to reduce fatigue - I tend to overshoot or jitter and have to correct myself or do things slower when I don't have a physical object to give mass in my hand.

And finally; no scrollwheel. I don't notice that I use it, but whenever I encounter an old mouse without the wheel I realize how much I depend on it.

While I would like to agree, I don't really think format matters as long as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war is going on. I would rather have a consumer demand that the music retains the full dynamic range. Quiet should be quite - please DON'T try to decide at what volume I hear the music. I have a volume control, I can turn it up myself thank you very much.

The newest CDs of the bands I listen to (which I admit are rather loud, but also melodic) sound imho like crap. The individual numbers are good - but I can not listen to them in sequence. All appears have equal volume - even the quiet ones! It really tires my ears. Also the sound doesn't seem as "sharp" to me, it its loud and overwhelming - but there is no "kick" in it, even when it shift from a "quiet" passage to a "massive" one, it's just noise... :(

In quantum optics when you need to silence the vacuum noise from the "dark" port of a beam splitter. You make a squeezed light source, point it at the dark port and decrease the power to just *below* laser threshold. It does not emit light, but it still squeezes the vacuum state along the path of the beam-without-light, i.e. a "coherent beam of darkness"...

I've always found that phenomena slightly eerie... :-)

I tried hard to find one in 2006 (for work; had this brilliant idea to use it as a lab-journal - 90% of what data I produced was in various lab computers anyway).

I eventually settled on a Toshiba convertible (M400 if I remember). Not a tablet, but the best option at that time. My conclusion: 1) To heavy. 2) Screen didn't have the right tactile feel. 3) UI interface not optimized for tablet use (even using XP for Tablet edition + MS OneNote).

I'm quite happy that Apple broke the ice. I would never buy one myself (too walled garden), but the UI are great.

I'm waiting for the rest to catch up and deliver an equal-or-better experience. I have been patiently waiting for the past 5-6 years or so, can wait some more...