Comment Re:Too generic (Score 1) 158
I decoded the sky and found constellations!
I decoded a cloud and saw a bear!
Comment Re:Freedom of Speech (Score 1) 375
When you allow the government to have the power to censor, then you give the government a power that will inevitably be abused. The only way for a free people to protect themselves from the abuse of a power is not to allow it to exist in the first place.
In Indonesia, a Winner For Now In the Browser Wars 76
angry tapir writes "Mozilla is building an army of volunteers in Indonesia to help customize Firefox and recommend add-ons. Mozilla wants that input so it can retain the high market share that Firefox already has in the country. Web statistics company StatCounter puts the share at 75 to 80 percent, the browser's highest in Asia. The worldwide share of Firefox, which competes with Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, is just over 30 percent."
Comment Re:and (Score 1) 248
If the people want to hear what you have to say, they will pay you to tell it to them. Or watch it for free on Youtube.
In what country does every single citizen have the right to be heard by every other single citizen whether they want to listen to you or not?
Maybe if your name is Castro, Kim, Chavez....
Comment Re:Old hat (Score 5, Informative) 295
According to the article, concentric circles of temperature variation in the cosmic background radiation were caused by successive massive black holes, some of which supposedly predate the big bang.
Comment Re:What it comes down to... (Score 1) 83
Indium is three times as abundant in the earth's crust as silver, with Canada being the leading supplier currently. That's still a lot less abundant than silicon.
Comment cool (Score 2, Insightful) 66
Just don't put your tongue on it.
Submission + - National Park Service Says Tech Enabling Stupidity 2
theodp writes: The National Park Service is finding technology to be a double-edged sword. While new technologies can and do save lives, the NPS is also finding that unseasoned hikers and campers are now boldly going where they never would have gone before, counting on cellphones, GPS, and SPOT devices to bail them out if they get into trouble. Last fall, a group of hikers in the Grand Canyon called in rescue helicopters three times by pressing the emergency button on their satellite location device. When rangers arrived the second time, the hikers complained that their water supply tasted salty. 'Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,' said a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park. 'Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you are up there for the night.'
Submission + - Germany to roll out ID cards with embedded RFID
An anonymous reader writes: The production of the RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10 year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards from the first of November. The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities. here are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however.
Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called "basic access control" (BAC), where successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts.
Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called "basic access control" (BAC), where successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts.
Living In Tokyo's Capsule Hotels 269
afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”
Submission + - Sir Patrick Stewart (cnn.com)
david.emery writes: SIR Patrick Stewart... came out on the Queen's New Years Honors listing...
Scientists Build a Smarter Rat 302
destinyland writes "Scientists have engineered a more intelligent rat, with three times the memory length of today's smartest rats. Reseachers bred transgenic over-expression of the NR2B gene, which increased communication between the rat's memory synapses. Activating a crucial brain receptor for just a fraction of a second longer produces a dramatic effect on memory, as proven by the rat's longer memories of the path through a maze."
The Science and Physics of Back To the Future 436
overthinkingit writes "A scientist has tried to apply serious math and physics, including the Law of Cosines, to analyze how the DeLorean in Back to the Future travels through both Time AND Space: 'in order to pull off the kind of time travel we see in the Back To The Future trilogy — the kind where the traveler is transposed in time, but remains stationary in the same relative position to where he/she left — the DeLorean would have to be an outstanding space ship, in addition to its already laudable work as a time-ship. According to Doc Brown's stopwatch, Einstein the dog travels precisely one minute into the future on this first jump, arriving, relative to their frame of reference, at the same location he left. But how far has this reference frame itself traveled during that one minute?'"
Comment Re:80 hours (Score 1) 1055
What will us average Americans do with the money we save by bursting the "health-care bubble?" Well, as typical modern human beings, we will probably spend it on health care. Pills to make us happy, surgeries to counter our gluttony, procedures to make us look youthful, and inefficient, end-of-life, I'm-not-ready-to-die emergency health care. We'll either spend this money directly or demand government services to supply it (meaning higher debt or taxes). In other words, Americans spend enormously on health care because we want to, and if we had even more money to spend, we'd spend that on health care too. Nobody wants to be sick, and nobody wants to die.
Comment Re:sue Amtrak and JetBlue (Score 2, Insightful) 675
It may not be easy, or cheap, but it's your duty as a free citizen to stand up for your rights. Freedom is not a natural human state. It must be maintained by the people every day, in every generation, whenever and however destiny calls them to do so. A people who wait to defend freedom, or who leave the task to others, loses it.
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How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
