Well sure, if we could actually observe the weather on this planet and confirm or refine our speculations, that would be great. Unfortunately, the technology to do so is well beyond our means at this point. By the time we actually are able to directly observe this planet, our weather models will probably be much more refined as well.

I'm reminded of the planet discovered over a year ago that was tidally locked to its star, which created a habitable zone circling the planet where the light from the star would hit it at an oblong angle, creating a zone of essentially perpetual twilight where life could form. We had quite a few ideas already for what the environment on this planet must be like, until further measurements of the star system revealed that the "planet" was really just minor errors in the calculations of the star's wobble, and there wasn't even a planet there to begin with.

This article isn't "just knowledge for knowledge's sake." Indeed, it seems to be purely speculation for speculation's sake. I'm actually very concerned by the line in the summary, "With patience and cunning, more than you might think," because that really implies we know a lot more about what we're talking about than we actually do. I'll just be happy when the weather forecaster on TV can accurately tell me the weather for the next week.

So, some users signed up for "Protected Registration" and are now pissed because GoDaddy is trying to... protect their registration? It doesn't sound like GoDaddy is refusing to transfer domains, just providing the service users have paid for. This is a complete non-story.

And KDE is just a Windows ripoff. So really, Razor-Qt is just another Windows look-alike. That was actually one of the things I liked about KDE, the interface was so familiar to what I already knew, it made transitioning easier.

I like how his advice is coming directly from how he personally feels a UI should look and feel, instead of the potential mess of bringing in a group of average people and asking them to compare UIs, and performing usability tests to tune the UI towards the common user. But no, clearly every UI should be tuned for Paul Miller, he knows what a good UI is supposed to feel like.

After fourteen years of graduate school, Professor Farnsworth settled into the glamorous life of a scientist. Fast cars, hot nightclubs, beautiful women... the professor designed them all, working out of his tiny, one-bedroom apartment.

So torrenting music and movies is OK, but as soon as it's something you support, it's suddenly theft? Nope, sorry, doesn't work both ways. That point has been covered many times here, you can't "steal" intellectual property like that. Coyne's comments and questions still belong to him, even if the video containing them isn't released. And he's still free to make his comments public however he pleases. I know Slashdot has quite a few militant atheists, but please try to sound objective in your summaries.

Assuming the audit system is actually random, there's no way you can guarantee that two audits won't come up back-to-back either. Are you really willing to take that chance?

Now you're assuming they haven't been trained to pull items from random depths in the cart, as much of a pain as that might sometimes be.

Self-checkout lanes where I live tend to be the cashiers that are more observant and reliable than the average cashier. I'd assume with a system like this, they'd tend to be even more so.

Yeah, I'm sure he's heard that one before too. The guys manning these stations aren't likely to be that naive.

People actually determined to shoplift are still more likely to just stuff the item in their jacket, where the auditor is unlikely to check anyway.