I have no real opinion here but heh, you just supported GP's point. :)

The net has a lot of the answers but it sucks as providing the questions, unfortunately.

Yeah, I fail 100% to see how that guy could be seen as more interesting than McAfee here.

Maybe the GP is just a big fan and didn't realise the guy's Slashdot interview sucked.

You should be sure though. 5% is 5%, the population or usage doesn't matter. 5% is small.

If that 5% were somehow permanently knocked out it wouldn't be a huge problem. The other 95% is vital on the other hand.

I like wind power, and it's obvious you do too. But you shouldn't let it cloud your sense of proportions.

You should have poured distilled water into your metal-air battery instead. Instead, your car has ground to a halt.

Also you now have hot grits in your pants.

Slashdot has never claimed to be just a tech site. Also, you can't discuss events with your peers on major news sites.

Was all the information we received during the 911 attacks accurate right from the start? At least I heard wildly different accounts as the situation developed, so I'd say no.

"Social media" didn't really exist back then, and certainly isn't the cause. When something sudden happens it takes time for the information to disseminate, and for a while people have to rely on rumours. It's the same as it ever was.

It's possible that one thing has changed: people have developed unrealistic expectations for how quickly you can get accurate information from far away.

Hello! I can assure you you're not the only one whose skills are between those of a normal person and a Unix veteran. In fact, I'm upgrading to the next Ubuntu LTS within minutes, using the GUI.

I think fixing whatever problem your computer has with the help of http://ubuntuforums.org/ is a good first step. After that you could try different window managers (Unity, KDE...). That way you'll find your way of doing things and will also learn how to swap parts of your Linux.

Finding out how you want to do things is important, since then you'll be a lot more motivated when you try to modify your system.

Right. People enjoy what they're good at. He's going for a Ph.D. Those are the kind of people that are good at making an impact. If we were good at "enjoying life", we would have pursued the path of greatest pleasure instead of the path of greatest impact. If he's not happier grinding, he's on the wrong path.

I hope you're joking, or trolling. These are not either/or choices. The idea of having to either live completely for something or not do it at all is crazy. Unless someone's signing up for a convent that is, and the OP isn't apparently.

The best way to become a loser is to concentrate on something 120% and then burn oneself out within a couple of years. Even if one were to survive, employers don't want boring people who have only ever done one thing.

This is not the case, and the reason likely is that we're dealing with nuclear instead of chemical measurements.

IANA chemist or physicist, but from what I understand it's like this: while we can do pretty damn accurate measurements of chemicals, it's nothing compared to how well we can measure radioactive isotopes. They emit radiation by definition and therefore broadcast their presence. What's more, some specific radiation signatures only appear after nuclear tests.

Basically, there is an absurd amount of atoms all around us, and all of them get into everything. When you get close to the level of measuring single atoms you see the truth: there isn't really any such thing as "sealed" (if there are actual experts here you should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

PÃivi RÃsÃnen

Ok, now that's just umlaut abuse.

(okay now Slashdot broke completely normal letters so I have to use weird typing hacks. Thanks for sucking ¥$¥[{, Slashcode!)

Actually it's just vowel harmony, with a handy explanation including a Venn diagram available here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony#Finnish
The vowels y, a:, o: can't be used together with a, o, u in the same non-compound word.

Also those dots aren't diacritics: a: and o: are considered letters like any other.

This post brought to you by the association of unnecessary language explanations.

As the sibling poster also pointed out you're confusing generations. The early blue LEDs go back further than 25 years - I believe some blue dashboard lights used to be LEDs in the early 80s.

Also, I was specifically talking about indicator lights, not all available LEDs. Among these there has been a trend of roughly red->green->blue->white, all depending on a combination of fashion and efficiency. In the 80s a red LED often meant "powered on", but now it's quite rare.

In recent years white LEDs have appeared in more and more places. After early red and even earlier weak blue LEDs, in quite a short time we went from green to blue to white indicator LEDs, and now the white ones are getting ever better.

They're really a pretty miraculous technology: they're at least partially replacing everything from real candles to filament lamps to gas discharge lamps. They're about to unseat low pressure sodium lights as the most efficient streetlights, if they haven't already done so. Meanwhile they can still turn on and off faster than other lamps, and contain smaller amounts of toxic substances than most alternatives. They're a very science fictioney technology happening right here in real life.

Hah, I pretty much came here to see if someone else made that connection.

If they deploy this tech more broadly in the future there's going to be an apparently random, small group of people who are somehow very hesitant about it.