Comment Re:In related news... (Score 1) 375
Are you suggesting that there's a chance that statement would be wrong? It sounds to me like a textbook example of income elasticity of demand.
Comment Re:Disturbing (Score 2, Informative) 610
He's not saying that this is so because humans are made of electrons. From the premise "If people have free will, then particles have free will" (proved), and the premise "Particles have no free will" (they being incapable of thought as we know it), it follows that people do not have free will. If they did, particles would certainly have free will.
Comment Re:kdawson's new catchphrase? (Score 1) 96
That New York Times article by itself makes it pretty clear that the authenticity of the portrait is disputed.
Comment 5-sided snowflakes (Score 2, Funny) 100
If the ice crystals are pentagonal, they will form pentagonal snowflakes. This will give us a better chance of finding the snowflake with magic properties depicted on page 00062 of the Principia Discordia.
Comment Re:You know what would suck? The Y2038 Problem (Score 1) 465
Isn't that equivalent to "number of milliseconds since 0001-01-01"?
Comment Re:Mystery Pits (Score 1) 552
Haven't you read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!? There was extensive use of IBM calculating machines in the Manhattan project.
Comment Re:Why so down? (Score 1) 258
Good luck getting a copy of one of their books, though. Ptolemy III gave the Athenians a security deposit of 15 silver talents (think millions of dollars) so that the world's only copy of the complete works of Aeschylus, the greatest playwright of his day, could be taken to Alexandria, copied, and returned. Once it was there, he apparently decided it was worth 15 talents, and kept it. Because of him, most of Aeschylus's work is lost.
Comment Re:Jewtube? (Score 1) 248
Larry Page and Sergey Brin happen to be Jewish. In addition, YouTube recently responded to pressure from the Anti-Defamation League to remove content posted by Palestinian terrorists.
Submission + - Earth's Evil Twin (esa.int)
Riding with Robots writes: "For the past two years, Europe's Venus Express orbiter has been studying Earth's planetary neighbor up close. Today, mission scientists have released a new collection of findings and amazing images. They include evidence of lightning and other results that flesh out a portrait of a planet that is in many ways like ours, and in many ways hellishly different, such as surface temperatures over 400C and air pressure a hundred times that on Earth."
Submission + - The Taxman Barely Cometh
theodp writes: "While Congress is considering lowering the 35% federal tax rate, a lot of companies don't need help from Washington. They've been finding legal ways to shrink their tax bill for years, with 'cross-border tax arbitrage' — getting profits out of the U.S. if taxes are lower offshore — emerging as one of the hottest tax-avoidance strategies. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the S&P 500 companies sending in the smallest checks sports a number of high-tech household names, including Amazon and Yahoo, who respectively sent Uncle Sam 2.8% and 2.9% of their earnings before income taxes over the past five years, and Apple, which paid a whopping $0 in cash taxes last year."
Submission + - What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes: What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
Today I want to ponder the question: what if Microsoft, not Google, had created Gmail? What would be the differences in that web mail client for users today? What if we apply some of the same design rules that brought us Hotmail, for instance?
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html
Submission + - Nintendo DS TV Tuner News (dcemu.co.uk)
bandit writes: "Nintendo has underestimated the demand for their soon to be released Nintendo DS TV Tuner. The TV Tuner is to be released in Japan on November 23rd for 6,800 yen (about $60USD). Since the peripheral is not a game, Nintendo started to accept orders without making prior announcements regarding
placing orders which started on November 8th. The TV Tuner allows the DS to pick
up Japan's 1seg TV broadcast service. No word if a TV Tuner would be released
in the US or in Europe."
Submission + - "Sex on this beach is being recorded..." (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "Florida's Martin County, officials are debating the use of talking, networked Web security cameras to scare off people looking to have sex on the beach. No word on what the systems does if you show up there looking to just, say, get a tan. Officials are concerned about a number of recent arrests of men soliciting men for sex at county beaches in the Palm Beach area. Proponents say they want cameras to watch all beaches and parking lots but not public bathrooms because that would be an invasion of privacy.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22133"
Submission + - Obama: Open Formats for Government Data
buswolley writes: Discussing technology policy at Google Inc.'s Silicon Valley headquarters last week, presidential candidate Barack Obama mentioned his desire to promote "universally accessible formats" for government information.
Submission + - Web Browsers Reviewed: Have You Heard Of Sleipnir?
Patrick Griffin writes: Have you heard of Swiftweasel, Flock, Shiira, xB and Sleipnir? Apparently, there are over 100 existing (although not widely used) web browsers. Most of them make use of the rendering engines Trident (IE), Gecko (Firefox), WebCore (Safari) and Presto (Opera 7 and above). However, some of them offer large fields for experiments and exploration, e.g. 3D Engines, but also really useful browsers with advanced functionalities such as desktop-tools integration. Besides Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer there is a number of promising alternatives which can improve your flexibility, increase your productivity and enrich your browsing experience.
