A start-up in the US recently had their account withheld by Citibank because of the content of some YouTube videos on their blog. This sort of situation isn't unique to PayPal.

Moon/Mars is a learning step towards greater exploration.

And then when the Sun moves towards its final days?

"Why??! There are vast regions on Earth, that remain unsettled"

Right now, we have all our eggs in one basket. A total extinction-level event would mean the end of everything - the overpopulated areas AND the barren deserts.

Beyond phones and cameras, a good use will be for kitchen appliances like toasters, kettles, sandwich makers, blenders, etc that are powered by the benchtops. For phones and cameras, it'd just be hype - most people would charge their phone over night once every few days, surely?

I recently disabled JavaScript in Acrobat.

A day before that, I visited Pirate Bay for a fraction of a second before noticing something odd (in the statusbar) and shutting my browser. I use Firefox (up to date) on XP (up to date). I didn't click to approve anything during the process of visiting PB and getting infected. There was a rootkit, malware, etc. Took me a few attempts to get rid of it and it wasted a lot of time. Obviously venturing out into the dodgier regions of the net has its risks, but the last time this happened to me, I'd visited the site of an NBA team. Each time, I believe the cause was a rogue PDF or Flash piece possibly pushed through an ad network.

Very frustrating.

I am not an astrophysicist, but why not?

Not smart enough? Parental pressure to follow your father into plumbing? A death in the family during a critical part of your schooling? Lived too far from suitable tertiary institutions? Can I have a hint? :P

I have been thinking about trying to get a Milky Way composite photo large enough to print and mount as a false-ceiling in my home office. Then have it backlit so the night lighting in the room is worth kicking back every now and then to stare at in wonder.

I have to track a lot of personal passwords and also 200+ passwords for client websites, emails, etc. I use Password Safe and recommend it:

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

Hides when minimised and has a useful function that enables it to copy a password and minimise again when you double click a client name (i.e., if you need their main/default password). Quick and easy.

Used to have Filezilla set to remember client passwords until a PDF hole led to a bot stealing Filezilla's password store and auto-hacking a lot of sites that were a serious pain to clean up.

And get the news out in the mainstream press and in the right channels where opportunists will see it (IRC, forums, etc). Would spammers take the risks they do if the penalties were higher and more common?

They should use a system of coloured icons:

  - shape changes (e.g., made a leg skinnier)
  - skin, wrinkles (removing wrinkles or similar)
  - skin, blemishes (airbrushing freckles, moles, arm hairs, etc)

Our current methods (or at least some of them) for detecting exoplanets tend to find us large planets that are close to their respective suns...

In the US, do you have a system where any bank transfers to a new (previously unused) external account must be approved by a time-limited PIN that is sent to you by SMS? Both banks that I use provide this by default.

Has the copyright owner filed to have the image removed (as was likely done by Time) and Flickr denied that request?

Out of mod points, but liked your naming scheme. Nice work, especially with the laptop!