Couple of decades? Science has always been funded by government (academic) and industry. If anything, it's more industry driven now than at any point in the past. I would fear the state of the world if all science was to become controlled by companies...

My captors continue to torment me with bizarre dangling objects. They eat lavish meals in my presence while I am forced to subsist on dry cereal. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of eventual escape... that, and the satisfaction I get from occasionally ruining some piece of furniture. I fear I may be going insane.

Your company tag line should of course be: "All your base pair are belong to us."

Hands down the best paleontology museum. I've been 5 times, and am still fascinated. And after the museum, you can explore the Canadian Badlands where many of the fossils were uncovered.

http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/exhibits.htm

It can get even more complicated too: if you have 10x coverage of a position, and 9 say T while 1 says G, it may be an allelic variation. There's a one in 16 chance this'll happen randomly instead of 5 Ts and 5Gs as you expect.

These Japanese researchers are obviously part of the "Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids".

Translating a section from the article:

The CMP party had essentially re-established "double damages", so-named by the bill's opponents. Internet users sanctioned under this bill for illegal downloads, after two warnings, would continue paying their subscription fees for between two months to a year while their access was suspended. [...] "Once again we are seeing the government's amateurism, as well as that of the Ministry of Culture and the UMP Party," commented Mr. Dupont-Aignan.

My understanding from an IEEE article a while back was that the ballasts are designed cheaply, to keep the unit cost low for CFLs. The problem is that the power draw graph of the CFL is pretty rectangular instead of constant, turning the nice sine wave of voltage from the utility into a mess (bad "harmonics"). When line current and voltage are out of phase, you get a bad power factor because you can't harness the power (current and voltage combo) effectively. So CFLs don't have to be bad, we just make crappy ballasts for them because it hasn't been much of a problem yet in aggregate.

Also, there's the whole cold-weather thing. Traditional fluorescent tubes will start up in the garage for me, provided it's over 0F or so. Not so for CFLs; I went back to incandescent.

I was on the board of our rather large condo complex and wanted to replace the 100 or so incandescent bulbs outside with CFLs but was afraid of the cold factor (it gets to -40 sometimes where I live). So, I took four brands of CFLs and did a controlled experiment: stick two of each brand in the deep freeze overnight, then quickly screw them into sockets to how well they light up. GE and Sylvania 's ballasts punked out, even after warming up. The only brand that worked completely was Globe, the cheapest of the bunch, so don't always go by price. We switched the bulbs in 2005, and haven't replaced a single one yet. They are controlled by photo sensors, so on and off once a day, with no hiccups even in the cold...

It's tuf to understand your message, tho I rufly get your point. French has some great ones too. My favorite is the simple, single mora produced thru five letters:

"oeufs"

Enuf said.

U r rite! I h8 wen ppl try 2 make me use xtra letrs! My msg stil gets thru... USA! USA!

http://www.twine.com/item/122mz8lz9-4c/wolfram-alpha-is-coming-and-it-could-be-as-important-as-google

I can see why the article got a theonion tag, there was a great article way back:

Eight Million Americans Rescued From Poverty With Redefinition Of Term

Funny enough, the commercial must have worked, because guess where the guy bought the domain:

% whois ComcastSuperBowlPorn.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

      Domain Name: COMCASTSUPERBOWLPORN.COM
      Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
      Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/
      Name Server: DNS66-1.NEXCESS.NET
      Name Server: DNS66-2.NEXCESS.NET
      Status: clientDeleteProhibited
      Status: clientRenewProhibited
      Status: clientTransferProhibited
      Status: clientUpdateProhibited
      Updated Date: 01-feb-2009
      Creation Date: 01-feb-2009
      Expiration Date: 01-feb-2010

>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:46:33 EST