Furthermore, how would you not riot over your government doing something like that to you?

That is a good question, and I think it really depends on how much you already have. If what you have is mostly worthless and you are on subsistence living, then such a devaluation makes no real impact. I suspect a large number of North Koreans might be in that situation. The only effect rioting will have might be getting you executed.

This is why you should always buy gold-plated Monster cables.

I am not sure if the story is really true or not, but it stopped being believable when it said "the manager called again after a few days to apologize". Really? He remembers the person who had come in a few days earlier complaining about (targeted, yes, but still) mass-mailed coupons? And he calls them to apologize again?

It would be nice to see managers like that at the stores I shop at.

I still support 7-bit ASCII, you insensitive clod!

It's just Microsoft that want to control the web in place of Adobe. Nothing will be gained for the user with this. That codec is managed by a patent pool.

SP3 is supposed to upgrade to 7 or 8 (though I think if you're already at 7 it leaves it alone).
SP3 DOES NOT upgrade IE.

Are you from the future? I'm a GIMP myself, but come on...

I am not an astronomer but there also seems to be a lot of improbable things in this story. Obviously it's odd to find ice and organics on an asteroid but not impossible. But it's the first asteroid (24 Themis) these two teams have independently looked at. It's evenly distributed on the surface as well which is also odd. And it has to be replenished from within -- which I think challenges a lot of assumptions about asteroids -- otherwise this water would have baked away a long time ago. These last two might be related in that the asteroid has a water table with seepage from the inside out that -- due to a lack of strong gravity or possibly the Yarkovsky effect -- is distributed fairly evenly.

I'm glad that two teams independently verified it but I'm a little concerned that there may be a flaw in the methodology of the reflection of the light. I'm sure they've accounted for everything but I'm just concerned because the only logical explanation is either our fundamental understandings of asteroids is largely incomplete (the first one they picked was laden with organic molecules where normally there are but a few traces) or the methodology of determining their composition falls prey to some unforeseen phenomenon/distortion in this case.

I'm sure I'm not the only one excited to see what the Japanese bring back from the Itokawa Asteroid.

Yes exactly. A two legged robots are useless if they don't have the extra appendages to help them maintain balance or regain their bipedalness after losing their balance.

Do you know if that actually is something that monks still do?

I would assume that the process of manually copying manuscripts started to taper off when the printing press went into operation, let alone now with digital copying processes.