From TFwA:
Curiously, the duration of the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) coincides very closely with the reign of King Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), known as the Sun King.

The conclusion is obvious. It's France's fault! Now, pass me a mess of those Freedom Fries.

That's... awesome. You don't have to know the players to recognize a good old-fashioned troll-and-flame war, 1980s style. Boil it down, and you've got a typical bash.org conversation. I'll add that to the stories I tell my kids about how things haven't *really* changed since character-based-display days.

The other one is how I was doing tech support via direct modem dialup to someone's PC in Helsinki, using "Carbon Copy"... while fixing the DOS problems, the (mostly non-technical) lady on the other end was flirting mightily, 20 years before online chat became part of society.

There is a whole industry dedicated to trading on familiar names to sell new (and completely unrelated) ventures. Why waste years building credibility when you can buy it?

IOW, if its not the same BYTE, its not the same BYTE. Does anyone really care about the "brand" so much that they are excited to see it back in use regardless of what that use is?

Completely agree. BYTE was a pioneer, something unique, a computer magazine back when computers were an oddity, not ubiquitous.

BYTE had its time. Like all of us, it lived and then died. The arrival of some gadget-review "Zombie BYTE" should be an occasion for sorrow, not celebration.

I don't have any objection to Microsoft refusing to certify whatever software they don't want to certify, for whatever reason they choose. If "not certified" means "won't run on Xbox", then perhaps the market will exist for alternatives, such as the Kinect-to-Linux setup already mentioned. (Or maybe not; porn seems to be aimed at the least common denominator, as evidenced by the fact that it's mostly crap.)

But it's somewhat ridiculous to say that the reason for denying such apps is that the Xbox is "a family friendly games and entertainment console". By that standard, any number of violent games should be excluded, from Bioshock to Stubbs the Zombie. Sure, "Family Friendly" is a fuzzy, undefinable term -- heck, you could make the argument that Portal would make little children sad (oh, how I miss the Companion Cube).

Reject the app because it's explicitly sexual. Or because it's poorly written, which is equally likely. But don't rack in Christmas sales of Call of Duty while saying the Xbox is "family friendly".

[insert obligatory Microsoft-is-evil throwaway line here]

The big oil and gov are afraid of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control

I wouldn't have bothered responding to this old canard, especially from an AC, but my future son-in-law laid this on me during a (very) long road trip. He was convinced that hydrogen must be that Secret That Oil Companies Don't Want You To Know. After all, it comes from WATER, for crying out loud. You can drop a 9-volt battery and get hydrogen, for crying out loud... all we have to do is put that in a car and run it on water, right? Right?

*facepalm*

For those new to the laws of thermodynamics: Hydrogen is combined with Oxygen to form Water, yes. But it takes energy to get the menage-a-trois separated. And the energy required to liberate H2 from that codependent relationship is, by the laws of physics, no greater than the energy you'll get by combining it *back* with O.

My discussion partner said, "That's ok, we'll just have batteries to do the electrolysis." I gently suggested that if you're going to have enough batteries to generate enough electricity to generate enough hydrogen to run a car, you've got enough batteries to generate enough electricity to run a car -- without that lossy "generate hydrogen" step.

To his credit, I think he understood. That's one. AC, here's hoping you're #2.

The writer of the article -- which despite Slashdot's implication, is not in The Daily Oklahoman but in the University of Oklahoma student newspaper -- makes several valid points, and I fully agree with his conclusion. But he couldn't hide his bias:

We should be concerned with the 12.7 percent of Americans who live below the poverty line, or the 7.9 million people who die worldwide because of cancer, or the 9,000 innocent Afghani civilians we've killed fighting an unjustified war...

I know I'm going to anger my fellow Green Party members with this, but a little bit of history is relevant. We were attacked from Afghanistan. They made themselves a target. The fact that President Bush was to afflicted by his ADHD to focus on one war at a time, causing massive failure in Afghanistan, doesn't negate the fact that we had the right (and even international support of that right) to invade the country.

Sure, it's not fair to paint the entire article by this one off-putting statement. But it diminishes the argument greatly -- it's a Godwin effect. If I were to, say, repost it on Facebook, its effect would be negated by a reply saying "This loser thinks we shouldn't have fought the terrorists in the first place".

It sounds like the student has been in a debate class at some point. He should have known better.

As obvious as it may be to include a "picture" of an atom -- a Rutherford model -- it seems terribly incorrect to use it as the primary image to be associated with a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. Though I guess it's good enough to make the article feel "science-y".

I can't help but recall Wyoh Knott, the heroine of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", who conceived of an electron as "about the size and shape of a small pea".

I guess I've seen too many of those stupid banner ads for whatever scam it is that always uses some variation of the same thing. You know:

$UNREALISTIC_RESULT by $OBEYING_VERB this $NUMBER_1 $WHIMSICAL_ADJECTIVE $INSTRUCTION_SYNONYM

And then I keep reading, and sure enough, it has something to do with losing mass. F@(%!#% Internet, get out of my damned head!

Damn you, Enrico Fermi, and your infernal paradox. Damn damn damn!

As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week

I'm sure it'll change over time, but the stats from the first 24 visitors from Slashdot are quite interesting:

Browsers
Firefox: 10
Chrome: 7
Mobile: 2
Opera: 2
Safari: 2
Arora: 1

This tells me that Slashdot users don't use IE. At least, not those who read brand-new stories and are willing to click an unknown link and chancing NSFW content. Thankfully, it's SFW, unless your boss was already "gonna give you up".

I'll be curious how those stats hold up tomorrow!

I've always preferred SoCuteURL. It makes URL's that are sometimes short, sometimes long, but always a lot easier to retype (say, from a text message) than a computer-generated hash. For example, I've got a better chance of telling someone how to type in socuteurl.com/yappypupperpig (so cute u r l dot com slash yappy pupper pig) than I do goo.gl slash anything.

Of course, I also have a soft spot in my heart for http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/ -- but they refuse to "shorten" http://goo.gl/ for me, saying "This URL has been rejected to prevent the universe from collapsing on itself."

Awesomely informative post, thanks!

Insofar as your argument I would venture that the dead snakes would be full of NAPQI, an unhealthy surprise for any critter eating them that was unable to metabolize this chemical.

But does the NAPQI metabolite actually make it into the bloodstream of the scavenger or bird that eats the dead/dying snake? If we (or more accurately, they) are lucky, maybe it gets broken down in the digestive tract before causing any trouble.

Trust me, I've seen it. You're thinking of attention like "famous person" attention, or something you'd see in a movie. Mundane, everyday clinical depression doesn't work that way -- the need for attention is a subconscious thing, not a purposeful attempt.

Someone who's depressed doesn't say "Oh, I need attention, I'll do something stupid today". It's more like the childhood verse: "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going to eat a worm."

That's why OD'ing on Tylenol is a case of "Suicide in haste, repent at leisure". If it's too late for the antidote, you get plenty of time to realize what a dumb thing you did as you wait for a transplant (in a hospital under psych watch).

Once the dead snakes are doped on acetaminophen, don't they face the risk of whatever native species might eat them overdosing on acetaminophen

Probably not. The snake will die after its liver wears itself out breaking down the Acetaminophen. All that will be left in the snake is a worn-out liver and non-toxic Acetaminophen metabolites.

Arsenic, by contrast, doesn't "break down". It's an element, so it kills you and remains Arsenic. Other poisons would likely behave similarly. My guess is that Tylenol (I'm tired of typing the long word) was chosen *because* it's less likely to perpetuate in the food chain. In fact, I think it would be just about impossible for it to get beyond two layers -- the liver of whatever eats the snake should take care of the excess with no trouble.