Comment Re:Dupe (Score 2, Informative) 365
But Pegasus is a much better ride for picking up chicks here in the States...
Comment Re:The age I live to may vary (Score 3, Insightful) 575
I take the stand that most religions branched from Judaism...
No offense intended, but I suspect Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Confucians, Taoists, Zoroastrians, and a whole lot of Native Americans would beg to differ with you on that point. According to current information, the earliest compiled Vedic texts predate the compilation of the Torah.
I suspect the similarity in stories is more a factor of the tendency of humans to find wonder in similar events. Picking up on your example of the flood myths: Floods are not unique to one culture or region, and because the weather works in cycles, some will be small, others will be quite large. They impact villages that are sited along rivers, lakes, or seas. People lived in these areas for similar reasons - access to water, food, and arable land. Therefore flood myths are not uncommon. There doesn't seem to be geological evidence supporting one single flood that would have affected all the world's cultures (or a common predecessor culture) at once.
Facebook Reverts ToS Change After User Uproar 260
rarel writes "CNN and other media outlets report that Facebook reverted their TOS update and went back to using the previous one. 'The site posted a brief message on users' home pages that said it was returning to its previous "Terms of Use" policy "while we resolve the issues that people have raised."' Facebook's controversial changes to its Terms of Service, previously commented on Slashdot, included a mention that (users) 'may remove (their) User Content from the Site at any time. ... However, (they) acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of (their) User Content,' triggering a massive uproar from users and privacy groups."
Major Cache of Fossils Unearthed In Los Angeles 215
aedmunde sends along news from the LA Times: "A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed, is among the remarkable discoveries near the La Brea Tar Pits. It's the largest known deposit of Pleistocene ice age fossils... in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places — under an old May Co. parking lot in L.A.'s tony Miracle Mile shopping district. ...huge chunks of soil from the site have been removed intact and now sit in large wooden crates on the back lot... The 23 crates range... from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck... There were, in fact, 16 separate deposits on the site, an amount that, by her estimate, would have taken 20 years to excavate conventionally. ... Carefully identifying the edges of each deposit, her team dug trenches around them and underneath, isolating the deposits on dirt pedestals. After wrapping heavy plastic around the deposits, workers built wooden crates similar to tree boxes and lifted them out individually with a heavy crane. The biggest one weighed 123,000 pounds."
US Nuclear Weapons Lab Loses 67 Computers 185
pnorth writes "Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have confessed that 67 of its computers are missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone. A memo [PDF] leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, but the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration dismissed fears the computers contained highly-sensitive or classified information, noting it was more likely to cause 'cybersecurity issues.' Three of the 13 computers which went missing in the past year were stolen from a scientist's home on January 16 and the memo also mentioned a BlackBerry belonging to another staff member had been lost 'in a sensitive foreign country.' The labs faced similar issues back in 2003 when 22 laptops were designated as being 'unlocated.'"
Submission + - Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020 (techluver.com)
Tech.Luver writes: "Russia has launched a project to create a new generation of spacecraft and boosters, the head of national space administration said on Friday, making clear that they would not appear on orbit before 2020.
"A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying. Leadership in space exploration was an issue of national pride in the Soviet Union, which was the first to launch a satellite and a human into space.
Although badly hit in the years of post-Soviet political and economic turmoil, the space sector remains one of a few where Russia remains competitive and on which it pins hopes to diversify its economy heavily reliant on oil and gas exports.
( http://techluver.com/2007/11/09/russia-to-build-new-spacecraft-by-2020/ )"
