That is how we see things. Regardless of whether we're right or not, an alien civilization could very well have come up with a theory that adequately explains chemical reactions that is completely different. To think otherwise is to succumb to your own bias.

Now, I agree that a space-faring civilization would most likely understand integers, but you can't possibly know that. The universe holds too many amazing things. We have only the tiniest understanding of it, and much of what we 'know' could very well be wrong.

Let's take a slight detour:
Imagine a species that evolved in space, rather than on a planet's surface. To meet our current definitions of life, they would need to be able to move around and interact with their environment, which means some sort of propulsion in space. If this species managed to make it to our planet, they could be very intelligent and still not necessarily have any need for integers or subatomic particles.

True, but they also evolved on the same planet with the same conditions. You can't assume that alien life would be anything like the life forms on this planet. Some people think they might be, but we don't KNOW.

Your link isn't working for me, but unemployment numbers only count people who are actively looking. If they gave up and got jobs at McDonalds or Walmart to keep from starving, they wouldn't be counted as unemployed.

How long will it last this time?

They've scaled it back in the past and it just comes back in another game. In six months or a year, if they've kept that crap out of their games, maybe I'll consider giving them money again. Maybe.

Maybe in principle, but in my experience using the hardware, the drivers that NVIDIA is providing are far superior to the AMD drivers available for all but the most basic uses. This seems to be the general consensus, at least where I tend to spend my time.

If you're more concerned about software freedom than I am, maybe you'd rather have AMD. My Linux boxes are much happier with NVIDIA, especially my HTPC. If I get enough cash to throw at it, I might try a low power Ivy Bridge or one of the new Atoms for a new HTPC, but the low-power standalone NVIDIA cards are just so easy...

Mod parent up.

My grandfather was an uneducated farmer. He's a smart guy, but his education included only basic math/reading and common sense. He put all six of his kids through college. Two are engineers, two are teachers, one owns a very successful paving company, and one runs a restaurant. They didn't get where they are because my grandfather knew everything and passed it down. They got there because he and his wife created an environment where they could (and had to) learn.

Anyone who knows about small-time farming knows that it can be very hard to make ends meet. If my grandfather could do it and make it look so easy, then there is no reason that all these office and factory drones can't.

A bit off topic, but if you really don't like the new Firefox interface, it only takes about a minute to change it back using their 'Customize' feature. And torrent downloads can be done with an add-on in about the same amount of time.

As far as torrents being for piracy... I have no doubt that the vast majority of torrent activity is copyright infringement of some kind (I hesitate to call it truly illegal), but it could be extremely useful if it were more widespread on the internet. It has a lot of potential to lighten the load on the infrastructure and increase download speeds at the same time.

It really is. I flew out of LAX in early May last year and the security line zig-zagged through ropes twice, up stairs in the middle of those, then went down the road for a quarter mile or more. Around a major holiday, I'm surprised people even make their flights.

All this means is that I will never again sign into my Google accounts in my browser. You can't give me screwed up results if you don't know who I am. If it gets too much worse, I'm probably just going to bail altogether. Thanks, Google.

As teslafreak said, people are rarely ticketed/arrested for it. In my view, the law is on the books to protect drivers from legal trouble from idiot pedestrians and to attempt to protect the pedestrians from themselves. That way, when I hit you with my car because you want to cross the street NOW, you can't mindlessly sue me because you're too stupid to not jump in front of a moving car. If you were in the crosswalk, you may have a more valid case, but that's a different matter.

No. I'm saying that, without a a society large enough and diverse enough to grow on its own, we would never have enough of the things to be at risk for what the GP is talking about.

Absolutely, they are still used. I'm certainly not saying they aren't. I wish they were used MORE. I'm just pointing out the fact that way too many manager types think computer simulations are good enough. Whether it's because of TV or some kind of strange trust in salesmen, I don't know, but it's becoming a bigger problem in some industries.

This.

Anyone who uses computer simulations to model physical things knows that computers just plain can't do everything for you. ie. In the case of a physical part, you still need to do hands-on testing and at least verify your simulation results.

I want to say I'm a bit surprised that physical models aren't used more, but I'm really not. I just pray it's because people are trying to trim costs and are rolling the dice that the simulations are good enough and not because they actually believe the simulations are perfect... At least if it's a cost-cutting measure, they probably know they could run into trouble. Maybe.

All of that is extremely unlikely to be an issue, considering they only have one sample of DNA that's any good. You would need AT least a male and female to start producing more mammoths in any kind of normal fashion, and you'd need a good number more than that to provide enough genetic diversity for them to be healthy.

While it's POSSIBLE we could eventually resurrect the species, it's unlikely, and we're not even close to that yet.

What is wrong with taking customer complaint calls and responding that way? There will always be a few people that whine about bad coverage; that doesn't mean the problem is on the carrier's end. If the majority of customers have a good experience, things will work out.

Verizon, the US's largest carrier, does not use CarrierIQ. Verizon is also largely believed to have the best/most reliable coverage of the big four. Clearly, you don't NEED CarrierIQ to successfully manage a network.

Napster, as it stood back then, is long dead. The Napster being discussed now is (was?) a music store that was formed from the ashes of the old music-sharing service. The second sentence of the summary even explains it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster

How you people get informative mods, I'll never understand.