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If this comes to fruition, we can at least console ourselves that Global Warming would be stopped (by killing out ocean-borne oxygen breathers).

They wouldn't have an inherently higher survivorship, but it would be toxic to predators, wiping them out (either directly by toxicity, or indirectly by starvation), at the same time as growing and spreading further. Natural evolution itself is unlikely to develop an organism capable of metabolizing mirror sugars, fats, proteins.

So this means people have to take an active role in eradicating this life form, if it ever comes to be.

Recently it was proven possible to construct an organism through synthetic processes. This is still limited to very close copies of the real things, but could be adapted to produce reverse chiral molecules.

http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/artic...

Edit: Although, the added difficulty would be the need to reconstruct a cell completely out of mirror molecules for it to work. In the case above, the genome was injected into an existing cell and left to replicate. So it's not quite a trivial thing to do.

Even if predators can't metabolize the mirror molecules, they can still eat them (possibly dying afterwards). So you'd need to release the mirror algae( ?) in very large quantities for them to overcome the predatory pressures in their environment.

It also means that by killing predators (zoo-plankton), mirror algae are creating a niche for standard algae too. So you could end up with a soup of R and L life, but diminished predatory activity.

You may want to have a payment processor as a backup solution, they will provide their own APIs to their services. Relying on PayPal alone can be risky.

Relevant resource on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)

The question should be: "Why doesn't C have a string data type?" C only considers a pointer to a char, it's the programmers' fault they treat this structure like a string.

Why do people think a social networking toolbar, social networking side panel and facebook iframe add value to their website?

All they missed was a can of spam.

One more step toward a fully self-replicating reprap.

It's yet another "command economy simulator", probably not very different from the models used by our central bankers. That is, if they indeed rely on models and not nakedly trying to enrich or prop up the big banks.

There is nothing special about credit and money, they are goods and services that arise naturally from market interactions. Having central banks "in charge of the free markets" is self-contradictory.

Another specimen: http://nobelprize.org/educational/economics/trade/index.html

For a fraction of the cost of an electric gun, they could have built a light-gas gun with better capabilities.

You mean, the first time I had a reason to use (the expensive) mobile bandwidth, the carriers are unhappy?

Can we get some perspective from a Swede on this issue?

In which case, they could have been in violation if it was GPL code.

Why would this guy bother copying stuff off the Goldman servers when it was open source, and presumably freely available?

Prepare for obfuscated-code penises.

It's more a courtesy call so they don't look quite like saying "Good riddance!"

Really, what's with those RGB+Yellow displays?

While retrograde, it's only "weakly" so in that it has a very slow rotation period (1 solar year == 2 solar days).

For a challenge, play Gomoku (large Go board, 5 in a row, column or across)

http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku/

So planets would tend to form more from the aggregation of gas rather than rocks or dust (then accumulate the other kinds of matter in the new gaseous body). Does this new model also propose that planets formed further out than previously believed? ("in excess of 50au" means further out than Pluto)

Pair production is not a new phenomenon, it's been known since Einstein. This is the fundamental way particle colliders work.

The military could issue USB storage devices and identity tokens that keep their information internally encrypted and which only work on sirpnet-trusted computers.

Scenario: Anything copied to the USB device is internally encrypted, offline, with one of the military's public keys. This process requires no network-side authentication, but would require the soldier's "identity key" to also be plugged in and "sign" the contents.

Putting the storage device in a non-trusted computer means the contents are not retrievable.

To decrypt the contents of the device, you have to first authenticate to sirpnet from a trusted computer. It's then and only then that the computer is allowed to unlock the information on the removable drive.

This method is not safe to hardware reverse-engineering, but should be safe enough for operational use.

In short: make life easy for skilled migrants and your economy will do good.

I'll say it's simpler than that: make sure immigrants get to sustain themselves through work rather than welfare. This creates a direct incentive for them to learn the language and actually integrate into the new society.

The great problem Europe has with migrants is not the inherent "poor imported stock", but the lean welfare rules and strict employment rules. This ensures a toxic proportion of new arrivals simply don't want to or can't integrate. It also means you get second-generation immigrants with no better prospects than their parents.

Sadly, the nature of the internet is that unduplicated content will die out within a few years. It should be OK to wholly copy an article, while at the same time pointing back to the original piece and original author.

Granted, the duplicator in this case should have made the original author more visible.

Anyone remember old YouOS? Google apps needs a more desktop feel before people get comfortable using purpose web machines.

The proper term is "resimulants" or "resimulated persons" (from Charlie Stross' Accelerando)

Good penmanship, by the way (date: 1988). Do young kids today get to practice their handwriting much?

Good stuff so far: "By evoking the need for deep conceptual hierarchies, the automatic computer confronts us with a radically new intellectual challenge that has no precedent in our history."

What does it mean to be a "scientist" in the US? Is it strictly a person in academia who is in the pursuit of research grants?

Does it also include private sector researchers and engineers?