"A New Zealand scientist has claimed to have developed a way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and will submit into Richard Branson's global warming competition. From the article:
Graeme Brown has invented a substance which can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The substance, dubbed Planetite, is derived from the naturally occurring mineral crystal Zeolite. Brown says Planetite can absorb carbon dioxide and separate the molecule into carbon and oxygen which can be re-used.
More importantly, Vimes is always determined to maintain himself and those under him as officers of the law (even though no one knows what the law actually is) who do not (for example) just kill the accused, even if ordered to. This becomes very important in many books, including Jingo, Fifth Elephant and Night Watch.
He's still the coolest character listed, though.
Slashdot is successfully killing the possibility for rational discussion amongst technically-minded people to occur. Its model is a vastly inferior medium for discourse than any other the web has thus far offered, with the exception of web logs (blogs are to the intellect as shit is to digestion -- read: no vitamin content, stop opining, the equivalent of shitting in ones own mouth!).
A friend of mine is a music teacher. In one of the beginner classes, he was explaining the different strings on a guitar.
"This here is the G-String."
A kid pipes up, "Wow, I thought the G-String was just a myth."
"No son, you're thinking of something else"
To the tune of Don McLean's American Pie.
A long long time ago, I can still remember
How Unix used to be so great
Tape drives were as big as cars
For saving files, known as tars
And perhaps, we could save it from its fate
But Richard Stallman surely shivered
When Windows NT was delivered
With icons on the desktop
And a flying toaster backdrop
Boy the way Steve Ballmer said,
Unix now is finally dead,
Windows was king they all said
those were the days.
Didn't need no business plan
so said the investor man
And now the stocks are in the can
Those were the days.
We all ran Windows 98
Blue screens that we had to hate
Gee our Packard Bell ran great
Those were the days
Everyone had a website then
And posted pictures of their kin
Mr. we can use a man like Linus Torvalds again
Those were the days
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on. -- Hepler, Systems Design 182