Comment Re:Exchange rate (Score 1) 223
The are exchange rates for Bitcoin. You can buy or sell at e.g. https://www.mtgox.com/
Comment Re:Kill Kill Kill...MacBook's boot-up bong! (Score 1) 591
The best way is to turn the volume down/off before you shut down. The setting is stored in PRAM and should restart with the same setting.
Comment Re:Yes, leave them alone! (Score 1) 303
Sorry, but we need the sacrifice for a good corn harvest...
Comment Re:file sharing site? (Score 2) 95
They don't even store torrent files anymore, as of February 29, 2012. They only have Magnet links (links with hashes), which lets your P2P app find a torrent file based on a hash match (not based on server name/location), which in turn... well, you get the drift.
Comment Re:Caring about science (Score 1) 409
It is not about a deity being _capable_ of creating life elsewhere.
The issue that there are those who think that humans are so special, that no other ET will be found to triumph the ‘glory’ of our species (whatever defines the difference between men and animals). Finding a small bug-like creature off-world wouldn't shock them, but contact with Klaatu would.
Comment Re:Just the OS - Mountain Lion (Score 1) 197
I just installed ML and quickly discovered that Software Update now uses the AppleStore GUI for OS update checking. Maybe it already did it in a similar way before, in the background, but that was a little shocker for me.
Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 81
Whoever put that on there, should be fired immediately, no questions asked.
And additionally, companies with such employees should be fined heavily. Only if it costs them much money, only then will this stupidity end. Protocols need to be in place, taught, checked and enforced with consequences.
Comment Cities in Flight! (Score 1) 683
If the Higgs boson is the particle that gives other particles mass, would our being able to manipulate the Higgs lead to being able to do things with mass such as we can do with electromagnetism? Will we be able to shield or block the Higgs from interacting with other particles, leading to a reduction in mass (and therefore weight?)
What will we see? Manipulation of gravity on an unprecedented scale: Cities as a whole will lift off into space!
Comment Re:Expensive, but... (Score 1) 118
This was an auction. *Every* person in the world, excluding just one, thought this items was worth less than the final offer.
Comment Register? (Score 5, Interesting) 390
If you're registered as living in a municipality ("still living"), with details like age ("old enough to vote") why would one need to re-register to vote? Who thought of this system? Why is this system still in place? It seems unnecessary.
New Fish Species Discovered 4.5 Miles Under the Ocean 96
eldavojohn writes "The University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab (a partner in the recent census of marine life) has discovered a new snailfish. That might not sound very exciting, unless you consider that its habitat is an impressive four and a half miles below the ocean's surface (video). If my calculations are correct, that's over ten and a half thousand PSI, or about seventy-three million Pascals. The videos and pictures are a couple years old, as the team has traveled around Japan, South America and New Zealand to ascertain the biodiversity of these depths. The group hopes to eventually bring specimens to the surface. It seems the deepest parts of the ocean, once thought to be devoid of life, are actually home to some organisms. As researchers build better technology for underwater exploration, tales of yore containing unimaginable monsters seem a little more realistic than before."
Apple Wants Patent On Video Game-Based iBooks 104
theodp writes "Patently Apple reports that a new Apple patent application has surfaced describing an application that would record your personal journey through a video game and turn it into a custom comic or iBook when you're done playing. Imagine how thrilled little Billy's Mommy would have been if she only had the chance to read the story of her son's foray into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or see how he dealt with BioShock's Little Sisters."
Gamer Plays Doom For the First Time 362
sfraggle writes "Kotaku has an interesting review of Doom (the original!) by Stephen Totilo, a gamer and FPS player who, until a few days ago, had gone through the game's 17-year history without playing it. He describes some of his first impressions, the surprises that he encountered, and how the game compares to modern FPSes. Quoting: 'Virtual shotgun armed, I was finally going to play Doom for real. A second later, I understood the allure the video game weapon has had. In Doom the shotgun feels mighty, at least partially I believe because they make first-timers like me wait for it. The creators make us sweat until we have it in hand. But once we have the shotgun, its big shots and its slow, fetishized reload are the floored-accelerator-pedal stuff of macho fantasy. The shotgun is, in all senses, instant puberty, which is to say, delicately, that to obtain it is to have the assumed added potency that a boy believes a man possesses vis a vis a world on which he'd like to have some impact. The shotgun is the punch in the face the once-scrawny boy on the beach gives the bully when he returns a muscled linebacker.'"
New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time 100
wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life."
ESA Releases Lutetia Flyby Images 48
The European Space Agency has released images from yesterday's close approach of asteroid 21 Lutetia by the Rosetta probe. At its closest, the probe was a mere 3,162 km from the asteroid, passing at 15 km/s and snapping photos sharp enough to make out features as small as 60 meters.
"Rosetta operated a full suite of sensors at the encounter, including remote sensing and in-situ measurements. Some of the payload of its Philae lander were also switched on. Together they looked for evidence of a highly tenuous atmosphere, magnetic effects, and studied the surface composition as well as the asteroid’s density. ... The flyby marks the attainment of one of Rosetta's main scientific objectives. The spacecraft will now continue to a 2014 rendezvous with its primary target, comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will then accompany the comet for months, from near the orbit of Jupiter down to its closest approach to the Sun. In November 2014, Rosetta will release Philae to land on the comet nucleus."
There is also a replay of the media event webcast on the ESA's website.
