Anyone wanna take an open mind for a minute? Someone else brought up a good argument- water and building blocks for life are *everywhere*. Recent discoveries point to complex and potentially life-forming DNA-like molecules happening naturally on asteroids throughout the universe, which could easily seed life all over, and asteroid impacts seed life all the time anyway (er, maybe). So the question becomes- shouldn't we be looking wherever there's life on Earth? And there's life on Earth... pretty much everywhere. Under heavy pressure, under light pressure, in water and in methane and deep beneath the crust feeding on minerals. We actually have good reason to believe there's life out there in our own solar system, even if it's just microbes feeding on ice caps. Water is still our best indicator, sure, but it would suck incredibly much for us to miss out on a wealth of planets covered in swarms of life (even non-sentient life) just because we didn't use indicators we already know about.

Wit/pun. Mod points plz? Ugh. (in general- PLEASE start banning this crap, mods. PLEASE.) Parent is right. As far as I can tell, there is nothing about these results that can't be explained away by known phenomena. If this can't detect life on Earth, why the hell are we going to point it at other planets?

I was going to make a longer post and allude to my point, but instead I'll just say it- I view KDE as the majority of Slashdotters view Vista. Only KDE hasn't come out with a Windows 7 yet.

Absolutely correct. The "pod" name just evolved to cover something that had clearly existed for some time. Heck, dig up any tech webcast from the time and listen/watch them argue about whether or not to accept the "pod" name because of its implied association with Apple.

...and it took until now for someone to mention Palin made the comment first, and Obama was just responding, so it didn't even begin with Obama even in this case. Rubbing a little QED on the OP.

How many people screaming about how unfair and silly this is would have been on the other side of the fence if this had happened to Gates back in the day? If I were a shareholder, I wouldn't care what company it was- concealing a freaking liver transplant of the highly charismatic lead of the company seems like a pretty big deal.

Wanna page back a bit to when Apple was manipulating stock prices illegally and working very hard to cover it up as "oh, well we didn't know at the time"? This is part of a larger pattern of wrongdoing that is very legally actionable.

In the time it takes for me to start Firefox, I can fire up Chrome and have my email checked. IE8 does run faster on some critical sites, so it's the only other browser I ever touch anymore. Say what you want about horrible advertising, but Firefox is playing catch-up and this is the perfect time for Microsoft to pounce (although it would be nice if they did so in a non-M$ way).

Correct. Dvorak is the only reason I've ever considered Das Keyboard (or, any coding-sensitive layout I could ever dream up, sky's the limit with a blank keyboard). I use a Microsoft Natural Elite, and it's almost a perfect keyboard. Why? First of all- no ridiculous function keys. How can serious computer users WANT function keys? The software goes bad, you can't take any of it across systems, etc. If you want to do that, get software to program key combos so you can use whatever keyboard you choose. Maybe CRTL+S+(+) to up the sound? It has great sound, but isn't overly loud. If my family members are sleeping, I can be nearly silent. It's ergonomically designed, saving my wrists so much pain. I fail to see why so many "elite" keyboards are the standard design aside from too many people favoring nostalgia over what actually makes sense (a trend in the business world?). The arrow keys are crowded, and so are the delete/pageup/down bit, but I don't use those too much anyway, and they work when I use them, so what does it matter? Overall, I agree with everyone who's nominated the Microsoft Naturals. They're cheap, spill resistant (in my experience), and have all the thrills like a good click that people pine for. Heck with spending $100+ on a keyboard- find a Microsoft Natural at your local yard sale or Goodwill and start enjoying typing today!