You mean a mobile phone keypad isn't a real controller!? Quick, someone tell Nokia.

Nothing could possibly go wrong!

I'm late on this, but there is some data that is free online, and other data that is available for a small fee. For instance some NASA satellites have public data archives or you can get ALL of Australia's rainfall data (over 100 years of it) for about $100. Research produces so much data that it cannot all be processed in the ways that scientists would like. I would suggest that you download data in an area you can get a handle on. Read up on the papers in that field (probably through a public library subscription) and then go and run some statistical analyses. Looking for correlations in weather patterns is always fun, astronomy is a bit more hard-core.

Phlogiston fit the evidence at the time. It was disproved by experimental evidence. Thanks for playing.

The name Intelligent Design is roughly 22 years old. Really, it all depends what the Queensland School Board means when it says ID. It may just be that ID is a convenient catch all phrase in their minds for many god based religions.

Forget the human density. What we really want to know is how much pressure we are putting on the Earth.

And for that we need to know the surface area of the soles of our shoes (and the local gravity).

Wait, so are you saying they missed the point, or missed the warhead, and isn't the warhead in the pointy bit anyway? I'm confused.

Two things:

1. Great, I want all the data on how to make an atom bomb provided in a neat easy to use format.

2. I accept that the viewer is ultimately responsible for their own due diligence, but why am I paying for a newspaper if the media aren't being held to reasonable standards of diligence?

Asking a scientist to show you their data before they have had a chance to analyse it is like asking a novelist to show you their storyline notes before the book is written. Or asking an office worker or government official to show you an incomplete report.

Generating the data is part of a process. You wouldn't interrupt any other professional half way through a major project and demand they give you what they've got and then judge them on it.

'Hey builder, I've paid for the frame you've built for my house. Now, despite our contract, for you to build me a house, I'm going to demand that you give me the frame, so I can get someone else to finish it. No, it doesn't matter if you've already bought the bricks, or if you already understand the plans, I'm sure someone else can do just as good a job.'

Please, give me a break. Scientists are paid to generate science, not data!

Except you won't keep getting funded unless you publish. If a larger group with more resources takes your data, analyses and publishes it before you have a chance to, then you won't get any funding, and you can't obtain more data.

You have it wrong. They are so worried about viruses *because* they use Windows, not the other way around.

If google owns a copy of each book they want to scan, then I think it's fair for them to maintain a scanned copy under fair use. Same as if I own a CD, I should be able to make an mp3 to keep as a back up. However, if they don't own a copy or haven't been given permission, then that's the same as me going to the video store, hiring a video and making a copy to show my friends after I've returned the original (not allowed).

Right, because a struggling part time writer like me deserves to have all his short stories republished by a global mega corporation before he can produce enough of them to put out his own compilation. How about 10-15 years for creative works?