the Marijuana particle: found in the Netherlands, of course
as for the Hicks-Boozehound particle: they're looking in Switzerland, but if you ask me they'd be better of scouting the southern USA
the names for these particles are a bit strange, but not without a certain charm imho.. ;-)

Before getting too excited, also keep in mind that this asteroid is fairly small (8 to 18m). It mentions in TFA: "If the asteroid did strike, it would probably explode in the upper atmosphere â" a fine spectacle, but harmless." So yes it almost hit us, but even if it had we would have no real reason to worry.

If they are really like us, it will mostly be a movie about female chimps showing off various badly filmed body parts in exchange for bananas

While out of all the countries, the US is definitely home to the most readers of this site, the majority of the readers are not US-based. Those are two different things. If you look at the stats on Alexa you can see that 47.1% of the readers are from the US, while he second place goes to India with a mere 8.8%. That still means that 52.9% of the readers live outside the US though, so the FAQ seems either false or outdated.

Please don't assume everyone on this site is American, it's annoying.

More seriously though, I found it surprising that slashdot is so specifically US-centric (given the FAQ mentioned below). It has always seemed like a global tech site to me, and I am not from the US either.

Oddly, I've not seen anyone mention the (fairly decent) Office 2010 ad. It was made in movie trailer form, and it didn't come across nearly as forced or cheesy as all the other ads they've produced. When I saw it, I thought they might have finally learned their lesson, but that was before the "Windows 7 launch parties" debacle, so it appears I was wrong there. :-) For the Office 2010 ad, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I&hd=1

There's a lot of talk about inflation in the comments, but most people seem to forget about the US Dollar not being what it used to be, on the world stage. And Hollywood is definitely a worldwide business. For example, if Europeans spent two billion Euros on movies 5 years ago, Hollywood would've made two billion Dollars. If Europeans spent the same money on movies now, Hollywood would make three billion instead.

Agreed, someone very close to me is suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which makes me very interested in how effective this could be, and how fast these human trials will start.. And if it does work to counter these diseases, how to get access as soon as possible (the disease is usually fatal within a few years). I suspect it is too much to hope that this will both prove effective, AND expect it to be available within, say, a year or so.. But it never hurts to ask :-/

Of course they would go to Fermilab, what else is a particle physicist going to do?

Just in case you are serious (or someone else who reads this thinks you are), let's get this straight. Evolution does not work that way. A single lifeform does not change into something else during its lifetime. Change happens over (many) generations. If some trait gives one lifeform a higher chance of producing offspring than another, then these traits will be more represented in the next generation (children look like their parents).

The last time society cast someone out and nailed him to bits of tree, it started one of the world's most popular religions. Please, let's not make IE6 a martyr. We'll never be rid of it!

Like you, I disagree with these "comparison charts" which let the marketing people cherry pick what options they want to show and completely hide all others. However, an important difference lies between the way these two charts are set up. The items on the chart at Mozilla are actually things that the browsers have or do not have (boolean values if you will), and therefore at least the checkmark is appropriate. On the Microsoft chart, they use the same checkmark system for things that are not 'true' or 'false' at all, like "Security" and "Privacy". They use this to suggests not only that IE is better at these fields, but that the others do not have this feature at all. It's a subtle difference that is very important to how people read the chart.

Football is not a violent contact sport, it's a friendly game where players kick a ball around and are barely allowed to touch each other. It's the fans that are violent about it. Get your facts straight, you insensitive american clod!

The article mentioned in the summary states that IE8 (beta) consumes more resources than XP, not Vista. That's quite a difference I think..