Comment Re:8 year old's question (Score 1) 173
Thanks! The article even has a heading called "What space is the universe expanding into?".
Comment Re:8 year old's question (Score 1) 173
Thanks! I've read about the balloon analogy, but it's hard for me to grasp. I'm not made for this, I guess.
Comment Re:8 year old's question (Score 1) 173
Question 2
There is no space & time outside the physical universe.
Are you sure? How do you know?
Etc. etc. ad infinitum. It's a good answer though, even I can understand it and it's helpful. Thanks!
Comment Re:8 year old's question (Score 4, Funny) 173
On behalf of all 8 year olds: thank you, that was very informative. As for myself: I'm supposed to have an IQ well above 130, but it would probably take me months to make sense of that page.
Comment 8 year old's question (Score 4, Insightful) 173
It expands into what?
Submission + - CompSci researchers: What Developers Call "Agile" Often Isn't (hp.com)
Esther Schindler writes: "When sociological researchers studied the cultural effects of Agile methodologies on workforces, they made two unanticipated discoveries: One, companies adopting Agile actually struggle more to cope with the side-effects. Two, development teams that succeed in producing better products and pleasing customers aren’t exactly using Agile after all. In “Agile” Often Isn’t, Scott Fulton delves deep into the findings. For example:
Entitled “Agile Undercover,” the first report from Hoda and her colleagues demonstrated conclusively that Agile development teams were failing to communicate with their customers — not just occasionally, but mainly. And in order to ameliorate the impact of these failures, teams and their companies were making active, intentional efforts to keep customers in the dark about their development practices, including their schedules of deliverables.
There's more. A bunch more."
Submission + - Nazi Buddha Came From Outer Space
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that scientists say a 1,000-year old ancient Buddhist statue with a swastika on its stomach that was recovered by a Nazi expedition in the 1930s was originally carved from a highly valuable meteorite that crashed about 15,000 years ago in the border region of eastern Siberia and Mongolia. And although it may seem that the story of this priceless object owes more perhaps to an Indiana Jones film script than sober scientific research, the "Iron Man" was discovered in Tibet in 1938 by German scientist Ernst Schafer whose expedition was supported by the Nazis, in particular by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS who believed the Aryan race originated in Tibet and was keen to recover objects from the area. The German and Austrian scientists who worked on the Iron Man were surprised to be able to trace the statue to a specific event in meteorite history. "I was absolutely sure it was a meteorite when I saw it first, even at 10 meters" says Geologist Elmar Buchner . "It is rich in nickel, it is rich in cobalt. Less than 0.1% of all meteorites and less than 1% of iron meteorites are ataxites, so it is the rarest type of meteorites you can find." Chemistry tests show the 23-pound statue's iron matches fragments of the "Chinga" meteorite field found near the Tibetan-Mongolian border in 1913 by gold prospectors. The material's hardness comes from its high iron content in addition to containing some 16 percent nickel."
Comment Re:The Netherlands is important because... (Score 1) 74
BREIN's stated mission:
The BREIN foundation is the joint anti-piracy program of authors, artists, publishers, producers and distributors of music, film, games, interactive software and books; A unique bundling of forces of the entire entertainment industry in the fight against Intellectual Property theft.
may not be what you or I agree with, but to many people it sounds like a reasonable idea.
In my experience the attempts to shut down filesharing sites are seen as annoying and as something that makes it a bit harder to get music and movies. The point that shutting down websites is a threat to the freedom of speech is lost on most people. In fact, the whole concept of freedom of speech is something many don't fully understand.
Comment Re:The Netherlands is important because... (Score 3, Informative) 74
The problem is not whether or not people believe in individual freedoms and rights. The problem is that the consequences of BREIN's actions are hard to explain, while BREIN's motives sound good to the layman (protecting creativity and all that).
I think the Dutch are spoiled in a way. We grew up knowing that are freedoms were taken care of by politicians, the media and the judicial system. Now that certain freedoms are being questioned, we don't know how to interpret the issues, let alone how to respond to them.
Comment Re:OMG (Score 3, Funny) 169
Watch a bit longer. The boredom will pass. Oh that's terrible, I'm sorry.
Comment Re:It's NOT Quicksilver (Score 1) 449
I didn't know that, even though I used Quicksilver in the few months I tried out OSX. The article, however, implies that the Ubuntu implementation will suggest actions from applications that are not active.
Comment It's NOT Quicksilver (Score 4, Informative) 449
There are a lot of comments saying that this is copying the Run command in Windows or Quicksilver for the Mac. It's not. These don't get you to commands within applications, As Shuttleworth says: “It’s all hooked in below the application level.”
Comment Re:It's a big deal (Score 1) 518
For a brief and alternate explanation of the fire-in-a-crowded-theatre case, see the beginning of this video of the late Christopher Hitchens.
Comment Link to acceptance speech (Score 1) 1
Here's a link to Assange's acceptance speech.
Submission + - Assange wins another journalism award (crikey.com.au) 1
Pav writes: Julian Assange has won a Walkley award, the equivalent of a Pulitzer in his native Australia. This is separate from the Martha Gellhorn prize won earlier this year. The story is reported on crikey.com.au, a web magazine frequented by Australian journalists and political elites. Although the comments there will be waffling and long-winded perhaps they will also be interesting as an indicator of the mood in that world.
