I made that infographic you posted above (the one where you said there'd be plenty of room), and your claim isn't exactly true. You obviously didn't see my follow up infographic, showing that we'd all have to live lifestyles somewhat less resource intensive than the average Chinese person.

Simply having enough space to cram people isn't everything.

Perhaps you mean "mailstrom"? *ducks*

Somehow I'm not surprised. As a gadget blogger, he got in waaaay over his head by speculating about a microbiology discovery.

In other words, typical Gizmodo/Gawker.

You must be new here. This is standard Slashdot M.O. Just put quotes around what someone else wrote (without citing them), and somehow they think that's OK. It's shockingly prevalent here.

I'm not saying the researchers didn't do their homework, but for something of this gravity, I would have expected Science or Nature to pick it up, not American Naturalist. Not that American Naturalist is a bad journal, but its certainly easier to get a paper in there than other journals (even Ecology, if I'm not mistaken). In light of that, I'm a bit skeptical of their claims.

I wish it were that easy. I have the "Instant Personalization Pilot Program" disabled on my account, but FB Connect popped up on CNN Money this morning.

What did I do? I specifically blocked any URL containing "fbconnect". Problem solved. OmniWeb let me do this using RegEx, but I'm sure the same can be done with AdBlock.

Maybe someone should sue Cuccinelli for fraud. After all, this sounds like a waste of taxpayer money if I've ever heard of one.

What an asshole...going after academics for political reasons. What's next?

I spent a summer doing this in grad school for the Vegetation Type Mapper project at UC Berkeley. I'm not going to lie to you--it was a ton of work. But the results were cool. The site has all the old maps georeferenced, plus ways to download them.

Needless to say, the library was involved in the project, as was a giant scanner. We relied on ERDAS Imagine software to georeference the old maps to current USGS base maps. There was also a lot of accuracy assessment involved to make sure we minimized error in the georeferencing process. Probably one of the trickiest parts was making sure the old landmark you were using as a control point had not substantially changed in the intervening decades.

My professor and her colleagues published a paper detailing the project.

Can't pass this up. 'Nuff said.

I think to say that Science Daily does any reporting is stretching the definition of reporting a bit much. I think "rewritten from a press release" is more like it.

If you want a real news piece, with real reporting, check out the article on the same paper over at New Scientist. They actually talked with the scientist involved in the study (and one that wasn't).

I was just at the AAAS conference in Chicago, and there was an entire session on synthetic biology and programming with DNA and RNA. Quite fascinating. Perhaps most intriguing (and promising) is the ability to add logic to RNA sequences, giving clinicians control over cell therapies. I wrote a summary of the session over at Ars if anyone is interested.

It would be an iOpener for the RIAA.

There, fixed that for you.

If the group that has the real iPhone unlocking software does get hit with a legit lawsuit and has to cease and desist, here's to hoping they release it for free along with the source. What's to say they can't? At that point, they aren't selling something. Maybe they could take donations? IANAL, but I think such a move would be feasible.