Um .... what about the CO2 generated by actually using a bicycle?

I don't know about anyone else, but when I ride my bike, I tend to breathe at a considerably higher rate than when I drive my car. Respiration takes in oxygen and other elements and produces CO2. Logically, therefore, bicycling cannot be a carbon-neutral activity.

I can only conclude that the logical resolution to this problem is actually very simple. If you're really worried about your carbon footprint, the only possible course of action is suicide.

Unfortunately, as other posters have noted, even dying isn't a carbon-neutral activity. However, I still advocate it, if for no other reason than it would rid the world of a whole bunch of self-important blow-hards who've been hoodwinked by a theory that in no way employs the scientific method.

I'm less concerned with the rapid major revision releases than I am with the damned thing being broken on Ubuntu 11.04.

I used Firefox almost exclusively since it was a released product. I was one of the people who used to take IE install CDs and use them for target practice. Really. And this was in the late 1990s.

Then, a couple of revisions back, it broke. Suddenly loading YouTube videos turned into a 50% likelihood that Firefox would start thrashing to the point where a kill -9 was necessary. I tried Chrome -- ye gods, was that a mistake. The thrashing increased to the point where I couldn't even open a bash window to kill -9 it. The only option was a cold boot.

Linux is just too damned good an OS to be forced to act like a Windows user and hit the power button. I refuse to run software that makes Linux act like Windows.

So I went to Opera. It runs. I can play YouTube videos. There aren't nearly as many add-ons as FF or Chrome, but add-ons hardly matter when your hard drive is constantly thrashing and you can't even switch between windows.

Too many major revisions? Yeah, probably. I can't really bring myself to care. The folks at Mozilla killed Firefox when it started thrashing. Now they're going to have to prove I can actually run the gorram thing before I try it again.

AGW is simply a good example of the press touting non-science as though it were fact. I bring it up as an example of how the press can completely buy into something because they have no understanding whatsoever of the scientific method. Real science requires the scientific method, not computer models based on assumptions as a replacement for the scientific method.

I reiterate: while it is interesting that 28 anti-protons appear to have been found trapped by the Earth's magnetic field, that isn't in itself indicative of anything other than 28 anti-protons were found. Touting this as an amazing event isn't appropriate. To do so is to buy into press releases rather than having anything to do with the scientific method.

Again, as I understand it, the annihilation occurs when particles actually collide. That's actually much harder to accomplish than it sounds like.

My understanding is that no one can keep manufactured antimatter together for very long because it's inherently unstable -- evidence that antimatter occurring naturally is extremely rare or outright impossible. I would have to acquaint myself more fully with CERN's experiments before I assumed that it was annihilation that caused it to fall apart. I'm not that familiar with the precise methods they're using. I assume that they slam the positron into orbit of the anti-proton and then attempt to keep it in one piece inside a magnetic "bottle." That's inherently an unstable environment. I've heard that it's the annihilation that causes it to come apart, but getting it to stay together in the first place is such a dicey proposition that I'd want to rely on personal examination of the experiment before assuming that what I've heard is true.

See, the press in general is so unreliable on anything resembling science that I always take any science "news" with a grain of salt. The press screws it up with such frequency that any other attitude makes no sense to me.

You get a reaction -- if you can get them to collide. You still need a linear accelerator to do it.

Again, the subatomic distances between particles are as comparably vast as the distance between galaxies. If you could shove a star from the Milky Way accurately enough, it would eventually hit a star from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.

If anyone actually produces anti-matter in quantities large enough to be visible to the naked eye, I'll be happy to test this idea. Let's say CERN finally produces a balloon full of anti-hydrogen. I hereby volunteer to breathe in the entire quantity and exhale it in the next breath. I predict absolutely no harm to my body or any of the surrounding atoms. Even under those circumstances, the subatomic particles will not collide.

We're getting close, yes, if you consider that each of those actions is virtually impossible -- and therefore represent some finite improbability. Consequently, all we need to do to make the Improbability Drive at this point is some calculations and a nice, hot cup of tea.

Sorry, I should have been more clear:

Yes, there are reactions when electrons and positrons collide. However, getting them to collide requires a linear accelerator (think Fermilab or CERN).

Only in science fiction do you get collisions without an enormous amount of assistance. Even if I had a brick made of anti-granite, the electrons in my hand and the positrons in the brick wouldn't collide without first holding one of us down and then firing the other at it with such accuracy and velocity that sub-atomic particles would actually collide.

For all intents and purposes, the space between sub-atomic particles is like the space between galaxies. From the right distance, the Magellanic Clouds are indistinguishable from the Milky Way. They are not, however, actually touching.

I'd be considerably more interested in the movement of positrons through, say, a wire made of anti-copper. :D

They didn't find antimatter, they found anti-protons. Matter is what happens when particles arrange themselves a certain way. A few stray protons doesn't constitute matter: neither do some stray anti-protons.

Furthermore, they've found a whopping 28 of them in two years' research. Even if they'd found 28 atoms of anti-hydrogen (which would require that each anti-proton also have a positron), the amount is utterly irrelevant in terms of power generation. 28 atoms of anti-hydrogen (which I point out again that this is not) wouldn't produce a reaction capable of running a AA-battery flashlight.

I believe that the BBC has fallen victim to sensationalism and/or ignorance. It's pretty much what I've come to expect from the world press.

Wow, 28 whole anti-protons.

So if we could move CERN into orbit (impossible), capture the anti-protons (impossible), and get 28 positrons to orbit them (impossible), we might wind up with 28 whole atoms of anti-hydrogen.

Once again, the world press displays its complete scientific ignorance. This ain't even antimatter, just some anti-protons.

I dunno, I'd chance it given the fact that what they've found wouldn't even make one Nickel atom. Those tanj Puppeteers are doing the usual corporate spin so as to avoid paying out the indemnity.

I've been trying to contact the Planning Office at Alpha Centauri without any success. Apparently the sub-ether network employs a protocol other than TCP/IP. I'm beginning to suspect that the system isn't even based on binary.

If I read this correctly, researchers have found anti-protons, not anti-matter. There's a difference.

Matter is the result of particles organizing themselves in a particular way. Hydrogen is one proton with one electron orbiting it. Anti-hydrogen (assuming any exists in nature -- an idea that is totally theoretical at this point) would consist of an anti-proton with one positron orbiting it.

That's not what they found. They found anti-protons -- which can be created by any number of nuclear reactions. I would submit that on a planet this size, it wouldn't be unexpected to find some anti-protons from time to time. If there's any real news here, it's that they seem to have found some trapped anti-protons.

Furthermore, there's no empirical evidence to support the notion that matter and anti-matter actually annihilate each other when they come into contact. It's a theory that dates back to 1898 when Sir Franz Arthur Friedrich Schuster whimsically wrote about it. It has been popularized in science fiction, most notably the Star Trek franchise in which M-AM reactions power warp drive.

We have never seen antimatter in nature, neither on Earth nor anywhere we've pointed telescopes. We see some radioactivity in deep space that might be the result of M-AM annihilation. They could also be the result of any number of other processes. The universe is an extremely large place, and it's sheer folly to think that Earthbound observations adequately explain everything we see. There's a hell of a lot more going on out there than we imagine stuck on the ground on Earth. I point to Earthbound observations of Venus that produced theories about the planet that were totally at odds with observations made by probes as an example.

Antimatter annihilation reactions are almost certainly the stuff of fiction, much like the scientists assigned to the Manhattan Project occasionally worried that they'd inadvertently set the entire planet's atmosphere aflame. See also anthropogenic global warming. While it's true that the best math may indicate that these things could occur, observation disagrees with theory.

I'm rather pleased that Linus came to the same conclusion I did.

On Ubuntu:

• Unity: Can't do work in it: sucks.
• Gnome3: Can't do work in it: sucks
• "Ubuntu Classic" (Gnome2): Somehow slower under 11.04 than 10.10: sucks
• KDE: Very pretty, but a resource hog: sucks
• XFCE: actually works. Yes, it's a downgrade from Gnome2, but the performance difference of Gnome2 on 11.04 versus 10.10 is dramatic. It's so dramatic that XFCE starts to make sense.

Bottom line: until Ubuntu 11.04, I was suggesting Ubuntu to my n00b relatives. It worked, it was reasonably fast, and someone could sit down in front of it coming from Windows and know how to do work.

This is now only true of Xubuntu. K/Ubuntu is not fast and in the case of Unity or Gnome3, a user cannot sit down in front of it and just work. They can work in Kubuntu if they have a fast enough system. However, only in Xubuntu can one both work and be fast.

I hope Ubuntu 11.10 and/or 12.04 make changes: serious, serious changes. Until it does, I'm sticking with Xubuntu.

I get my retro geek on via the C=64 emulator on my Motorola Droid.

What's killing all press (from local to world) isn't the Internet -- the Internet is just what's replacing the press.

What's killing the press is that the industry is laced from top to bottom with ignorant Statists capable of neither investigating nor reporting accurately on the events of the day. Almost every news story in existence originates with some Google search by a flunky desperately seeking something for the talking head to say so as to keep butts in the seats and hands off the remotes.

Amazingly, the entire industry is so insular and elitist that is neither capable of seeing its own obvious incompetence nor or recognizing the truth about their entire industry:

That is now nothing more than a batch of scandal sheets and hack-rags, and its former customers are starting to figure that out. Result: they're no longer buying what the press is selling -- because the press is selling total bullshit.

For thirty years, I've made a hobby of de-bunking the press. In the age of the Internet, give me any press story, Google, and fifteen minutes, and I can usually prove that the story never occurred in reality. There's typically a kernel of truth, but it will have been sensationalized and transformed to the point where it bears only a tangential relationship to reality.

Mark this and mark it well: the world beyond your immediate experience isn't what you think it is. Do not assume that anything the press reports is accurate -- in fact, it's a good bed that every report is made up of almost whole cloth.