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Science

Universe Closer To Heat Death Than Once Thought 237

TapeCutter writes "In a paper soon to be published (PDF) in the Astrophysical Journal, Australian researchers have estimated the entropy of the universe is about 30 times higher than previous estimates. According to their research, super-massive black holes 'are the largest contributor to the entropy of the observable universe, contributing at least an order of magnitude more entropy than previously estimated.' For those of us who like their science in the form of a car analogy, Dr. Lineweaver compared their results to a car's gas tank. He states, 'It's a bit like looking at your gas gauge and saying "I thought I had half a gas tank, but I only have a quarter of a tank."'" Fortunately, that quarter of a tank will still get us as far as we need to go and then some.

Comment Price is the problem. (Score 3, Insightful) 111

I got a Sony PR-505 last year and have yet to purchase a single ebook.

The DRM bothers me, but there are enough python scripts running around that will strip it out of the epub/pdf formats that it's not that much of a concern.

Price is why I don't buy them. While there are a handful of public domain books worth reading (opinion) the real content is only for sale.

I just flat-out refuse to pay 50% more for the same content in basically the same format that the publisher already has filed away somewhere. When do you think the last time that a major popular author wrote out a manuscript on a typewriter was? Or longhand? You know it's already in an electronic document format somewhere.

No printing, no binding, no shipping, no stocking, no returns. No fuel, no toxic waste from the paper making process, no toxins from the inks.

Yet I get to pay 50% more?

Comment Re:Why all the dissin'? (Score 1) 269

Well, those people could respond too.

Like almost all the others posting here, I tried, I really did. I made it through the first 6 before I stopped.

Hell I even continued to buy them until the prequel came out just in case he ever finished them, but at some point nearly everyone I know who has tried to read them noticed that "nothing was happening", it looked like "nothing was ever going to happen", and when long-dead characters keep reappearing that meant "nothing had actually happened."

Comment Re:Nobody likes ELF. Not even their "allies." (Score 2, Informative) 616

I'm really not trolling here, but PETA has been funding ELF for years.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/general/columns/story?columnist=guest_columnist&page=g_col_PETA_ELF_NYPost has a reprinted article from the NY Post.

I don't see many stories that are very recent, outside of what seem like blogs and bash-fests, but since PETA has denied ties all along, it doesn't make much difference to me whether they claim to have stopped or not.

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