Visit spaceweather.com daily for a month or two, and keep an eye on the various Sun images on the left side. One is used to point out coronal holes, and you'll quickly realize how common they are. This may be related to the approaching solar maximum, though don't quote me on that.

I'm much more concerned about flare and mass ejection frequency. With all the satellites and poorly-shielded electrical circuits we rely upon, one or two wicked ejections aimed at Earth could turn a lot of gear into expensive junk.

For most people, all that matters is that a kilogram is a reasonably consistent measure of mass.

For mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists requiring precise mass measurements, this matters quite a bit.

It's not obvious in the video, but a photographer captured a shot of the provocateurs on the ground... wearing the same standard-issue boots as the riot police. Oops.

Incidentally, Montebello's a nice little town. I think I was at the media centre dumping audio at the time this happened.

As for your comment on the interface, I'm curious what computer graphics knowledge you have that makes you think "solid colors, simple text" with advanced animations (such as the ones that happen when you enter or leave the Start screen) are easier to do than the iOS or Android "grid of static icons" with simple translation animation

I didn't realize simple rectangle rotations and transforms with one or two mapped textures/images was "advanced". It looked neat, but it also looked optimized for the available hardware, and the loading speed made me wonder how much of it relies on simply dumping everyhing into RAM on startup and hoping no one runs too much else at any given time.

I noticed the line at the end of the BBC article and couldn't believe what I was reading - does WP7 actually lack copy-n-paste capabilities? Apple took some justified shit for waiting years to include that capability in iPhoneOS. If that's for real, then WP7 deserves its unpopularity.

I had a chance to play with a WP7 device at a big box tech retailer on NYE (oddly, mere moments before getting an iPhone after a spontaneous discussion with my partner about my former piece-o-junk phone[0]). The interface was snappy, but it was pretty obvious why - solid colours, simple text. I have to wonder how well a WP7 device would operate under load with some third-party software installed.

[0] An LG Neon TE365F. Go ahead and laugh, I deserve it for purchasing such a turd.

It's going to suck mightily for them if unlimited data plans go the way that unlimited home broadband plans are, and if the end of network neutrality makes it possible to charge extra for packets exchanged with a site owned by a company that hasn't signed some kind of deal with your ISP. That cloud stuff's not going to seem so neat when a user has to pay extra fees just to use basic features of their devices.

Correct - the laws of physics do not enforce or encode any ethics or morals, only cause and effect. Sentient lifeforms can create those rules as they develop their knowledge and understanding of the world around them, and the effect their actions have upon it.

Reality will operate as it does - meanwhile, we can choose to act better toward each other, and toward other lifeforms. No one will judge us but us - now, how would you like to be viewed by our descendants, or the descendants of other, possibly sapient organisms?

If dolphins have rights, we won't be able to use them in genetic experiments to make them smarter.

We could ask if individuals would like to participate, but that requires a form of descriptive, common communication between hominids and delphinids, which in and of itself could be a worthy project, and certainly a prerequisite to seeking consent for a genetic manipulation project.

Perhaps the capability to perceive intelligence and self-awareness in other lifeforms should also invoke a responsibility to treat other lifeforms as we would wish to be treated.

Think about it - if there were an intelligent predator that used us as lunch, and the relationship was stable, how would you wish to be treated by that lifeform prior to consumption?

I'm one of those nuts that thinks we need to treat our brain-possessing food sources much better anyway, and that we can choose to act better than we do.

What's scary about recognizing the right of other lifeforms to be treated with dignity and respect, anyway? Much of our intellectual evolution concerned refraining from doing things we are perfectly capable of doing, or developing more ethical methods of doing things; this is no different, in my view.

Get your relatives copies of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World".

Honesty.

...ok, you know there is a difference between a lockout and a strike, right? The employer initiates a lockout, the workers/bargaining unit initiates a strike.

So you're saying the plant management should be declared terrorists? I just want to make sure I, and possibly you, understand what you're typing.

Am I the only person outside of South Africa who wasn't annoyed with the sound of vuvuzelas? CBC seemed capable of keeping them low, but audible, in the live mix.

That said, disabling game functions strikes me as preferable to draconian DRM schemes that end up causing unnecessary frustration for paying players.

Wake me when there is independent confirmation of this claim reported somewhere other than arXiv.

I once read of a fictional solid rocket motor design that used small fuel pellets fed into a combustion chamber instead of a big ol' rubbery chunk of fueI to allow for restart capability, among other things. Not being a rocket scientist, I'm unable to perceive the technological and physical obstacles to building such a system, but I do wonder if such a system is possible.