Mr Skeptic

That I can agree with. Not really. That is what distros are for. They contain most of the software you need so these choices are made for you by default. However, you are free to use different software if you want. Whereas in Windows they try to force you to stick with the choices they made for you. Not too many people like internet explorer or windows media player, but they are hard/impossible for the average user to uninstall. There's still lots of choice, but in Windows they try to force you to use their choice. Of course, there are lots of distros to choose from. I'd suggest Ubuntu, since it is one of or the most popular. Yes and no. If people know of a security breach, they will generally tell the people in charge about it (unless they are black hats). Then it can be fixed, by anyone. In closed source, people who find bugs and vulnerabilities cannot pinpoint their location, nor fix the problem themselves (they need the source code to do both). And if you're really paranoid, you could consider that Microsoft could have a backdoor to Windows, and you would never know about it. Whereas to do that with Open Source would be nearly impossible. Then you can use the distros that don't have bloat. Maybe Damn Small Linux. I don't think they'll be making bloat-free versions of Vista. Yeah, people steal concepts and ideas from each other once in a while, both in programming and the real world. That's a good thing. Imagine if only the company that discovered it was allowed to make cars, cell phones, computers, etc. I'd point out that people have stolen not only ideas but code from open source projects. For example, Microsoft copied Kerberos source code, then changed it so it would be incompatible with the original. Some of this I agree with. I doubt Linux will become a gold standard anytime soon, but there is ultimate control in the Linux world. You can pay a group of programmers to work on a specific program in a specific way. Of course, if you want only the volunteer programmers, you can only give them suggestions. There are both volunteers and paid programmers working on Open Source projects. I don't know what you are talking about with the learning curve. The more OS's you are familiar with, the less trouble a new one would be. If you mean more familiar with a specific OS, then yes, switching to a different one might be harder than otherwise if you have to unlearn stuff. The same thing should apply to eg the Mac. Nothing ironic about it. It goes the other way too. After using Linux for a while, and switching to Windows, I get really annoyed how I can't copy/paste by just selecting text and middle-clicking. It takes 3 times as many clicks to do with the mouse, or two key-presses. Little things like that can be so annoying. That is good advice IMO. XP is the "standard" OS, and Vista is the newfangled one that they had to release unfinished because they had missed so many deadlines. And the games run fine on XP

Well, for cystic fibrosis you would want to fix is the ability to move Cl- ions, not stop the reaction with sodium (which would be impossible in the body and would result in poisonous chlorine buildup). Anyhow, the salt would draw water out of the body and into the lungs by osmosis, resulting in fluid being transfered to the lungs. This is a good thing. Without the transfer of enough water to the mucus in the lungs, the mucus becomes very thick and is hard to get rid of. So you actually want some salt to be transferred to the mucus in the lungs.

If a carbon/carbon dioxide tax/cap is implemented, it would have to apply to products produced overseas as well. Otherwise, we will scare companies offshore, massively increase our imports (using more fuel to transport it as well ), and accomplish nothing positive. It would probably be legal despite trade agreements, as it would apply equally to American goods as to foreign goods.

You could probably get away with using just the height difference (of the water levels of the siphon source and destination) to calculate the pressure at the end of the siphon. Of course, if you are wanting to use a siphon to siphon water into the same tank, that won't work so good.

Looks like supercooling to me. The same thing can happen with soda bottles, but it turns to slush almost instantly. In the case of the soda, I would say it is because opening it causes rapid bubble formation which agitates and provides multiple nucleation sites, either of which would cause a supercooled liquid to freeze. Yours also seems like supercooling to me, but I don't know what would have triggered it (whether dust from the air, or being agitated, or something else).

Well, the best way to get fiber is of course to eat stuff that has it, which are usually healthy foods themselves. Taking fiber on its own is almost like cheating. I don't actually know whether taking a fiber supplement is healthy pr not, but my grandma takes some when she has trouble going to the bathroom, and it helps her with that aspect at least. In any case, I doubt it would hurt, especially if you don't come to depend on it.

It might not be what you are looking for, but Netcraft.com is a website that tracks other websites and gives you lots of information about them including uptime.

I too would like to see the results of that experiment. Of course if protein content in included in the dietary facts section, that would do nicely too.

I've heard of this, but I don't think much came out of it. A problem with energy weapons is that powerful energy sources are hard to carry. In any case, it will need testing to ensure that it is safe enough. Microwaves do not have enough energy to ionize molecules (they are of lower energy than visible light), but if they heat the tissue enough it could cause damage. If it caused some electric current to flow, that could also be damaging. Anyhow, the only place I would expect that this might show up anytime soon is on large ships.

If the number of (active) users increases linearly, and their individual posting rate is more or less constant, then the post count would increase as a rank 2 polynomial ([math]ax^2 + bx + c[/math]). A linear increase would actually be somewhat surprising, as the number of users can increase faster the more users there are, the higher on a search engine we are, etc. However, too much growth has the potential to ruin the atmosphere, as it would be harder for members (or mods) to be personally acquainted with each other, a high search ranking could attract a different type of poster (trolls, people wanting free handouts on homework, etc). Or, maybe we could grow big enough to increase interest in science in the population at large. Don't really know.

You can if you install the drivers. http://www.fs-driver.org/

If you want the less volatile substance, as insane alien said, you can boil off the more volatile without a distiller. It would be somewhat wasteful, as some of the liquid you want to keep will also be boiled away. The longer you boil it, the more concentrated the less volatile liquid will be, but the more waste there will be. If you want to keep the more volatile liquid, then you need a distiller. The classic example is water and alcohol. Repeating the distillation will increase the separation. However, they will not separate completely. In the case of alcohol, you can only get about 95% alcohol by distillation. If you want to calculate how pure you can make it, you need to compare the vapor pressures at various temperatures and/or concentrations. It would help if you said what the two liquids were.

The medicine is almost certainly water soluble, so washing it with water should remove it. Which would be a problem for rugs or couches.

Or, the space the photons are traveling through expands, increasing their wavelength (aka redshift). Not sure where the extra energy would go though.

I think it's called Dark Energy.

However badly we may damage the earth, it is unlikely that there would be any more hospitable place in our solar system. At worst, we would have to go underground, and wear enviro-suits when going outside. And that would be for nuking ourselves, or for truly insane warming.

Also, if this is true, there may be a message embedded in the CMB from a previous, extremely intelligent, extremely powerful alien civilization(s). Beats talking to space IMO.

I'd like one too, though I would prefer an internet one if possible. Anyone?

If you consider a classical electromagnetic wave traveling near/through classical electrons, then wouldn't the wave equation be slightly different? The electrons would get moved a tiny bit by the EM fields of the wave, so that the wave equation in space would no longer apply. A different equation could give a different propagation speed in accordance to Maxwell's Equations. Not sure how this would work with electron orbitals, though. Am I close?

I seriously doubt that either you or the scientific community would dump evolution if such a fossil were found.

No, he makes no leaps. All he said is That's a very reasonable guess; I can't see why you would think that unlikely. He is pointing out that the experiment is not such a big deal. When I read the report on NewScientist, I was very excited that they captured such a giant leap in evolution in such a short time. They made it sound as if E coli couldn't metabolize citrate, when it turn out it just couldn't ingest it in the presence of oxygen. I won't defend what he has to say about mutations and evolution though. More mutations needed for an ability drastically reduces the probability of that ability evolving, but more possible "correct" mutations for the ability drastically increases it again. I don't know enough about genetics to guestimate either of these.

Isn't there a possibility that by the time the universe ends, humanity might figure out a way to survive the contraction (if it contracts, that is)? Maybe go to the biggest void there is and expand it some more, or something more fancy. We'd have billions of years to figure it out.

I suspect that average IQ would be going up for the same reason that kids are getting taller. Oh, and if we manage to intentionally increase intelligence, we will get a technological singularity.

Clearly a win-win! Welcome to the club. --- Anyhow, I doubt that Graviphoton will answer the questions to anyone's satisfaction, but that's up to him I suppose.

If there were obesity drugs that really worked, people wouldn't be fat. Um, I'd suppose pot is the only thing I've heard of that might do that. Maybe. Don't really know.