Just the meter; the second is defined in terms of the rate of atomic energy level transitions.

You misunderstand qubits. A qubit can hold 0, 1, or a linear combination of 0 and 1, and with complex parameters (as in, real and imaginary). These are not discrete like digital information, they are continuous. While two bits can hold two dimensions of discrete information (amounting to 2^2 = 4 combinations), two qubits can hold four dimensions (2 times 2, because the parameters are complex) of continuous information (amounting to an infinity of combinations).

Discretization of qubits only happens when they are measured.

What about homophones? To, two, too? They're, their, there? The meaning of these words* in written English is well defined because they are spelled differently, yet in spoken English their meaning can only be inferred from context as they sound the same. There are also words spelled the same but with different pronunciations (e.g. desert, bow).

*I realise they're is a contraction, not a word, but you get the idea.

What about abbreviations? How do you pronounce Mr., for example?

What about dollar values? If I gave you $2, would you give me "dollars two"?

"You are coming to a sad realization, Cancel or Allow?"

I know I've heard that somewhere, but for the life of me I just can't remember where...

Oh come now, Legalese is to English as Pig Latin is to Latin.

As a scientist who has a fair bit of coding experience, including LabVIEW, ++ this.

What particularly annoys me about visual code like LabVIEW is that you can't diff. So change tracking is a pain in the arse, and forget distributed development.

LabVIEW itself is good for setting up a quick UI and connecting things to it, but any serious processing? ...No, thanks. If I could get my hands on something else that had the UI prototyping ease, connectivity to experimental devices (motion controllers, for example), but based on a textual language, I'd be a happy camper. (There are some things that come close, I'm sure, though I've not had the time to properly search. Busy scientist is busy...)

Nice idea, but it's circular. Energy is defined in terms of mass (and distance and time). You need Plank's constant to convert from photon frequency to energy, and unless you already have a definition for the mass unit (kg), Plank's constant becomes essentially arbitrary.

No, he's just wrong, or at the very least severely dumbing down the real picture for the sake of placating the lay audience (which Slashdot is, generally speaking, not). There's a few examples of this already on the first page - I didn't even make it to the second...

That seems to be a problem with a lot of modern science: correct, brief, understandable to the layman. Pick two.

The theory doesn't anthropomorphize the planet. The article describing the theory does, because that makes it more accessible and interesting to general readers.

Remember, not everyone is an emotionless nerd. Some of us like allegories.

So close... Rainbows End. It even points out the curious lack of an apostrophe in the book itself.

Unless you were talking about the album or the amusement park.

Yeah, I'm nitpicking. :-)