This is the part that always gets me..... the "nothing"

I understand that "nothing" is a concept that is very hard to grasp for a human being, but still...

As far as I understand the big bang is a series of events that led to the creation of our current universe. The part I can't get my head around is how "nothing" can turn into "something".
It seems to me that an event like the big bang had to be triggered by at least ''something". And that that "something" must have had some form of physic laws in order to trigger the event.

This is kinda what I mean.
In my (surely overly simplified) logic for "anything" to happen there must be "something" to begin with in the first place. But all I keep reading is that that is not the case.. And *that* boggles my mind almost to explosive levels ;)

Disclaimer: I'm just a layman who tries to get his head around theories like this purely out of interested (and is failing horribly most of the time)

Agree, iDeal may not be the end all, be all, solution for online transactions but it's pretty solid, safe and simple.

Currently I only do payments via iDeal or paypall only. My paypall accounts is empty most of the times. If I want to buy something via paypall I transfer the amount of money needed first and then make the transaction.

How is publishing information from/about a device you own a legal offence?

Agree, the first 75% (orso) of the book is a very decent "King". The ending however...

I read that he had the story in his mind for 15 years but never written and published it because he felt it wasn't good enough yet. He should have waited a few more years in that case... (purely my personal opinion)

You shouldn't be moving in line with the fastest cashier, you should pick a combination of speed and experience by the cashier.

A cashier with a lot of experience will be able to deal with difficult customers a lot faster then a 'newbie' would. For example, a experienced employee doesn't have to call the store manager to solve a problem, he/she already knows what to do.

When I aproach a line in a supermarket I always try to get in line with the most experienced cashier (unless I know he/she is really slow) But I also check the type of customers that are in line before me.

Lot's of old people? Skip that, they are to slow. Lot's of uptight persons? Skip that, there's a bigger chance of arguments with the cashier.
Lot's of younger people? Take that one, they'll tend to be in a hurry more.

Also, a line with a few people that have a lot of groceries tends to be faster that a lot of people with few groceries since the payment process is the most time consuming factor.

And actually, I disagree with the article since I'm usually in the fastest queue line. I basicaly made a study of it on my own, the pleasant side effect of ADHD I guess ;-) (Bet you couldn't tell that already ;-)

The subject at hand is donating to a website that publishes information not in favor by the U.S. government.....

"and you should be"
Whoever was behind 9/11, mission accomplished.

Seems to me that you'd wanna supply them with the best tool for the job. In an environment like the ISS the best tool would be a very reliable tool.

Optimizing production up there means making sure it works, always and forever. Since you can't simply replace broken stuff it's either full production or none..

Since there is no accurate way (not even remotely) to determine how many lost sales there were from sharing a song I'd say it's utter nonsense to base a fine on that.

A fixed fine per song seems the most fair to me. Considering I can purchase songs online for a dollar or less I'd say the fine per song should be somewhere in the lines of 2 to 5 dollar tops.

Both the industry as the legal institutions have to get out of their caves. The world has changed, movies, albums, songs don't have the status anymore they had 20 years ago.

Even the most casual music listener has thousands upon thousands of songs in their libraries. A mp3 hardly has any value at all anymore.

It sucks for the big boys in the industry, multi billion dollar profits down the drain for two reasons.
1. Technology ripped their monopoly to pieces, the multi billion profit days are over, forever. Suck it...
2. They missed the boat when they had the chance. They should have looked at Napster as a new market, not the root of all evil.

They laughed at Steve Jobs when he was trying to get iTunes store from the ground. Look who's laughing now. He has the music industry by it's balls. They could have done that themselves but didn't.

It's their own fucking mistake, common citizens shouldn't have to bleed for that.

Not a problem at all, we just need one big island where we can dump them.
Supply them with massive ammounts of high-tec surveillance equipment and shitloads of all kinds of weapons. Then keep the food supplies limited to 'almost enough to survive'

Come back in 10 years and shoot the ones that survived.

I don't have any children, nor do we plan to ever have them but even so I think the idea of robots teaching our future is insane.
Teaching robots will create robots.

As for the 'violence' of disassembling such a robot... Well, there you have it.
THAT is what school is about, teaching children how to behave in a social group.

You try big mouthing the teacher, the teacher let their authority reign...
You disassemble your robot teacher, it stops functioning.

Guess which of the two is the most important lesson...

And as a matter in fact, if I would have children and one of them would disassemble a robot I'd say 'good job', 'clever kid for doing that without electrocuting yourself' But now we're going to put you in a 'real' school and let me see you try the same on a human, good luck.

Using JS is not the same as needing JS.

I'm pretty sure a input field can do it's job quite perfectly without the use of a single line of Javascript.

In fact, I'm pretty convinced that the "web" as a whole could do without 90% of the javascripts that are being used. Most of the JS that is being used is either for the bling factor or just bloat.

edit:
The two minutes I had to wait to get a preview of this post is a perfectly good example of a input box that would have been much better of without the use of JS crap.

No, it is *a* important attribute. Even in this day and age.

Generally speaking, the fittest person (mentally and/or physically) is the person who has the biggest advantages, no matter where, when, why or how.

Which of the two is the most important depends entirely on your current situation.

Since any given situation can change completely in a split second it's foolish to dismiss any trait as less important.

Let's see, the physical strength and stamina to climb one of the toughest mountains on earth several times, not to mention the mental fitness, flexibility and willpower one needs in large quantities in order to do something like that.

I'd say his genes were top of the bill really

Funny you mention Darwin though.. .
The guy traveled around the world, visiting remote deserted places for years at a time in a era where such voyages were still the equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Also gross stupidity?

No, these are people that want to probe the boundaries and limits of their world, want to explore, excel and stretch their own limitations. These are most likely the types that actually will become true heroes if the situation would call for it.

If the guy climbed mt Everest several times than he and his wife were fully aware of the risks involved. About 1 in 10 climbers die on that mountain I think. So if she got pregnant she was fully aware that her husband had a decent chance of never returning.

They made choice, who are you to judge them about that?

One thing to consider is that the speed of the expansion has been accelerating ever since it started.

Also "Considering how slowly the universe must have expanded in real terms"
As far as I understand 'slow' is not really a good description to describe what happened after the big bang. The expansion rate defied every form of physics as we know it.

But still, that universe at that place, in that form, at that time, we observing it, now, in this place, at this time....
It doesn't make sense to me either ;-)