Humodour

SSDs are waaaaay faster than normal hard-drives. Perfect for the OS, while the less used parts of your systems (i.e. non-OS stuff) should go on the HD. The OS will be updating the SSD enough as it is. You don't want to add to the burn-out (which won't happen very quickly if it's just the OS on there).

There needs to be a decade or so of readjustment like this. It's correct that people shouldn't be needlessly spending. Simplistically speaking, debt is not good, savings are, and more importantly waste and thoughtless consumption are causing vast environmental problems not least of all global warming and clean water shortages (ever seen how much water and energy go into making the average consumer good?). I'm sorry but a perpetual consumption/perpetual growth economy is a fanciful notion that needs to start being challenged. Especially for countries with populations which are NOT increasing. Maybe we can return to looking at consumerism as something positive when we've made the lifecycle of goods highly-sustainable.

****ING ****ITY ****. I had typed a response going into some economic detail, than I accidentally hit some keyboard combo that apparently means 'refresh'. So, Morgoth, will 'just because' suffice?

Move to Australia?

What Scotland really needs is a weak currency. They do agriculture and tourism. Swapping the pound for the Euro is barking mad. Every country needs to be able to run its own monetary policy. I look at California and Greece and this belief is only hardened. The EU is a brilliant idea. A single currency (and a single central bank) for wildly different economies is not.

It's certainly true that you can lose one of your two brain hemispheres (e.g. to a bullet) and still go on to graduate college. A lot of your brain exists simply for the purpose of redundancy.

Are you 12?

I THOUGHT YOU GUYS MIGHT LIKE THIS GUIDE TO STEALING IN SKYRIM.

Chemists design automated method of rapidly discovering new molecules (including their reaction pathways). http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-techni...fast-track.html This is freaking awesome. Their method uses a robot. But that's not the terribly interesting part. What's interesting is that somebody has applied the methods of mass production to molecule discovery.

Awesome new robot design (with videos!). http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-gumby-...ght-spaces.html

I think there are a lot of countries out there that need to be split up for the good of their citizens and the world - The USA, China, for instance. Unfortunately I don't think the UK is one of them.

The USA - land of the free. Hahahaha. Or it would be funny if it weren't so worrying. Edit: And I'm worried in part for my fellow man, but mostly because the ****ed up **** that goes on in the USA (with corporate lobbying and right-wing extremism) has a nasty habit of spreading around the world to countries that would rather have none of it.

Haha, this is awesome.

They don't necessarily need to be the company that succeeds at their goals, just the one that starts a revolution in space travel. They may well fail as a business 20 years from now but leave a permanent positive impact on humanity with their methods. I think the world is definitely just a little bit of a better place because they exist.

The Telegraph is known to distort things with an anti-EU spin, no? So I'll wait until I hear the details from a more reliable source before passing judgement.

Everyone kind of expected It I guess, given the unsustainable levels of growth and an unfloated currency in. But this is rather horrible timing for a Chinese crash.

I've seen this pop up a few places now over the past few months, and I'm now hearing more and more of it. That is: China is about to enter a recession. The recession will not be driven by European or American problems, rather a drop in domestic demand (i.e. this is a problem before global woes even enter the equation). The cause of China's problems seems to be... drum roll... a housing prices bubble. Jesus Christ. http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/e...my-growth-14700

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-explorati...?c=y&page=1 I love you SpaceX.

Not sure about the bit about Iran buying US treasury bonds - I don't think they're allowed. Amusing otherwise.

You only live once, so I'll take an extra 3.4 years of health (and life) wherever I can get them (so that I CAN enjoy it for as long as possible)! I certainly thoroughly enjoy my life with my partner in the mean-time, Wals, so you're painting a false dichotomy. You conflate being healthy with being boring, anal, or unhappy. It's not the case. The things I do and see in my life are sometimes kind of surreal - I am more than entertained. And I usually don't need money for those things. Moreover, I also eat cheaply and live cheaply (so that I can save more money for when I graduate). You don't need to eat unhealthy food to live cheaply. What a joke. Heck, I also ****ing love the food I eat. But when you eat less processed and pre-made food and make more meals yourself, I find you naturally do tend to enjoy it more.

Yes.

Global warming, increasing food shortages, an expansionist non-liberal China rapidly become the world's largest superpower, and now a persistent global recession with no end in sight which is paralysing America and Europe simultaneously. All via the backdrop of a world population that grows by 1 billion people every 12 years. If we sound like we've been playing too many computer games, Hurlshot, it's because these are the types of far-fetched dystopian problems which make computer games settings fun. The fact that we're now seeing them in reality should be utterly frightening to you. I'm going to accumulate as much savings as I can in investments which are as stable as possible, and I'm going stay right here in non-coastal Canberra, the wealthiest city in the least-exposed country in the world, and study for the next 3 or 4 years while praying to the non-existent gods that this blows over enough for me to find a job in an interesting scientific field once I graduate. Then me and my partner will build a self-sustaining adobe house on the outskirts of Canberra which collects and recycles rainwater, runs off a combo of wind and photovoltaic electricity (with solar thermal for hot water), requiring grid water or electricity only as backup, while growing a lot of our own food. It's me plan, and I think it's a bit more viable than breeding horses from sheep and cows on Fiji.

Corporations and lobbyists DO exert far too much power over American politics. Moreso than voters. That's not to say that it isn't voters who ultimately decide which candidate is elected, but that's not quite the same thing as saying the voters are completely democratically free. Consider a situation (does it sound familiar?) where a voter only has a choice between two candidates, but both candidates have been bought off by a lobbyist, so it doesn't really matter which one you elect, they'll both act the same way on a certain issue. The USA's problems with inequality are REAL. There's plenty of knowledge out there to back that up. One reasonable indicator is the GINI index. By that index, China is now a more equal and fair society than the USA. Now that is disturbing. And here's a tip: it's not because China has suddenly become fair and equal, although it has improved somewhat. Man, playing Deus Ex right now and these guys really hit the nail on the head with a worst-case scenario of the USA's future. It's so poignant because it's so easy to see how the USA could go from point A (now) to point B (Deus Ex corporate anti-terror dystopia).

Gromnir, I was referring to the part of the article that, you know, highlights how disproportionate the response of the police officers was. Whether or not you think pepper spray is harmless, Gromnir, it's only meant to be used in a less than one second burst, it's banned as a chemical weapon in warfare, and one of the students was coughing up blood for 45 minutes after being sprayeD, and even you admitted it is implicated in the deaths of sprayed victims with asthma (considering the number of people I know with asthma, I would say that is really significant). "yeah, pepper spray is painful, but that is the point, no?" No. These were peaceful, sitting protesters. It is hard to see how pepper spray could possibly be authorised in that scenario. That is something that is utterly sadistic and worthy of jail-time. Being in a uniform does not make assault and torture legal.

Um, no. Decreasing your exposure to monomer units (which come out of polymers under things like mechanical stress, heat, UV, acid, solvent, etc), plasticisers, and other plastic additives decreases the severity and risk of things like cancer and endocrine disorder. It's not black and white. It's not "all plastic or no plastic". It's more like "if I can reduce my exposure to plastics by 50%, I reduce my risk of cancer caused by plastics by 50%". Or "if I reduce my exposure to plastic by 50%, I reduce the severity of endocrine disruption by 50%, possibly below levels that are even capable of causing disruption." When you apply that approach to your entire lifestyle, significantly cutting down on sources of cancer and disease, you're obviously cutting risk factors across the board. It's not going to guarantee you don't get cancer or die at 36 of a heart attack, but I think anybody who understand statistics would understand it's still very much worth doing (certainly in comparison to your fatalistic "who cares" attitude). Exhibit a: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-bpa-...anned-soup.html