The delays were longer than 16 minutes... over an hour in most cases. There's the printing of the data, strapping it to the pigeon, scanning it back in, it all adds time.

I'm not sure if they increased timeouts to cope with the problem.

Isn't IP already delay tolerant? I remember in the IPoAC trial for obvious reasons there were huge delays, but it still worked.

Oh, OK, I must have assumed that. You're Swedish?

By the way GIT was developed by Linus Torvalds and he's Swedish, so it's not the USA we'd have to 'get back'.

The term "git" is not used in the USA? I didn't know that. I just assumed it had the same meaning over there but nobody cared. After all, there is GIMP.

I have never liked the term "automagically". There's no need for it, because it is exactly the same as "automatically". Unless the user is somehow implying that magic is involved.

As time goes on, that distinction will become decreasingly relevant.

I would have thought genes have a good deal of 'prior art'.

Just tried it. Very silly and not sure I would want to endure a long phone call in that position. The Nexus 7 weighs quite a bit more than a mobile phone.

From the article:

> The colors in this image are not what a human standing on Mars would see — the presence of dust in the atmosphere would make the scene appear much redder. Instead, the pictures have been white-balanced to show how it would appear under typical Earth lighting conditions.

So the story is that a photo of Mars that has been adjusted so it looks like Earth to make it easier for geologists to interpret... looks like Earth. Wow.

> quite a few people have been asking me if it's possible to use the Wi-Fi-based Nexus 7 as a phone

Do these people own a Nexus 7 or have they even seen one? It wouldn't make a great phone.

It's too big to hold up to your ear and besides there isn't a speaker near the top. So that means you'd have to use it as a speaker phone. And as it only has wi-fi it's not as if you can use it on the go, unless you happen to be near a wi-fi hotspot or similar that you have access to - but using it handsfree in public isn't going to work well.

I agree.

Despite all the talk of positive feedback, accuracy, key travel, etc. I find I get on best with an Apple keyboard, which has little feedback and almost no key travel (probably less so than a typical laptop keyboard).

It's quiet and effortless, and very comfortable to use. When I'm forced to use another keyboard (e.g. on-site at a customer's offices) I often find it way too noisy. In a quiet office it's almost embarrassing to type when there's a loud 'clack' sound with each key press.

Actually I misread, it's bit/s/hertz.

Spectral efficiency does seem to be measured in bits per herts. At least, Wikipedia says so, so it must be true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_efficiency#Link_spectral_efficiency

I blame Hollywood. The moon is often shown in something more like a low earth orbit in sci-fi films (or at least the mass-market ones).

The famous 'earthrise' photo puts it in perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise