Or they simply transfer the data to the NSA for safe keeping after the two years are up. Perhaps a bit pessimistic, but at the same time it would not be a surprise.

I have an old Optiplex 280 and 270 running FreeBSD and Debian servers respectively. They are also stacked. When I turn them on, they quickly outpace any space heater. A couple of unusually cold winters ago, I used them just for that.

It was actually pretty good, but had nothing whatsoever to do with aliens. It was pretty much just a murder mystery.

Never say never. We are a notoriously persistent species. If we manage to survive our adolescence, living on Mars will be a cakewalk.

Form the first time on Slashdot it can be said, "You must be new around here." and actually meant. If civil discourse dominates your threads, you need to lower your threshold.

I was thinking more like intersolar trade. Water goes on giant ships to the moon every so often, and helium-three comes back. If it turns out to be to impractical to colonize distant worlds for a very long time, we must assume the colonization of the solar system works out barring we don't set ourselves back or completely annihilate ourselves, this could start to take shape in a century or so. Different places in the solar system have different resources, ships sharing resources would need to be in constant transit.

That's great but how about sustaining human life? These could be great jumping off places for solar system colonization.

The next time a chicken lays a viable egg white without the shell, let me know.

The black hole in question is eating matter near the rate of what is theorized to be the limit of how fast a black hole can consume matter. We've really never seen anything like it. ~875,000,000 is very young for such a structure to be so big in a universe that young. Anyway, when it is said that it is the brightest object in that part and time of the universe, we are speaking of the "extra bright" event horizon: the point where matter is super heated before tumbling into the singularity itself. Since it's all one dense gravitationally bound structure, the event horizon is part of the whole. The great part of this discovery is that it allows us to take a peek at ratios of elements such as hydrogen and helium relative to heavier elements in a still pretty young universe.

We've been following the development of this sort of technology here on Slashdot for a long time for sure. In fact, I find this area of research and development to be among the most fascinating of our time and am course always glad to see people getting help from them. However, I won't be truly impressed until someone can peel the Orange away with the bionic hand using nothing more then the same part of our brain that we would use to control that function in the first place. Perhaps the next time a story like this gets posted.

It's okay. You misspoke. It happens.

Tenacious Termite.

If I had mod points I would reward you just for admitting to being a Windows Phone user around here. But then again, so am I. My phone is on the list of phones eligible for the insider beta test, however, after doing research beyond the scope of the linked to articles, I find that the trade off in features is currently unacceptable. For example a slightly crippled Cortana among other things. Perhaps in another month. I have been on board with the Windows 10 Tech Preview since day one and the current builds not only feel finished, it has become my daily driver. I will likely get one of these: Acer Aspire R7-371T-50ZE when they come out, and of course put Windows 10 on it. I am a long time MS basher, but I like where they seem to be headed so I jumped on board.

It sounds like these "scopes" are going to rely heavily on data usage. They must have truly unlimited data in Europe. I don't see this going over well in the United States.