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The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is, frankly, rather ugly. It doesn’t fly, takes no glorious pictures of space, has no “one small step for man” quote-book, and doesn’t send us cool rocks. You can’t drive a space car on the LHC, and you’d better not go anywhere near it with a golf club. The LHC lacks all the beautiful theater and heavy-breathing drama of American space travel. But the fact is that manned interplanetary travel, with the technology available now, would be fairly banal in its practical revelations; just as landing on the Moon was really more an assertion of America’s scientific alpha-dog status than a genuine exercise in an even mildly revolutionary scientific understanding.

If as SCOTUS determined this week, the corporation is a person with 1st amendment rights, then it must also have a conscience. Can't have one without the other, I should think. That goes for MS and for Intel too.

...the corporate mind is going to have to learn some courage if it is to discover its conscience. “Do no evil” (Google’s motto) is not enough, even if its intent is genuine. Aversion betrays an underlying fear; it is the software patch, the unending trail of ineffectual security updates, of the mind. It would be far better to simply say, “do what’s right.”

And I nearly had my head taken off by commenters because I dared suggest that Apple might create Linux versions of iTunes, Safari, and Quicktime. Oh, and Boot Camp drivers for Ubuntu.

I'm primarily a political blogger, so I know that smart dissent alway, always, makes the things you love better. Like democracy and operating systems. Here's a sample of my Linux criticism, which was thoroughly ignored: What Linux Lacks.

This guy here has it right -- 7 appears to be solid but no more solid on balance than xp already is. The rest of my view of it is here.

This is what I mean when I write (repeatedly) of "death by a thousand charges." It has driven me away from Apple, and now I've passed that aversion to the next generation (my daughter's graduation present was an EeePC, and now she actually like Xandros).

Apple is going to be really sorry they took this line with their customers. Anyone who isn't mega-wealthy and has seen Ubuntu 8.04 in action will have to seriously question the payoff of buying Apple or Vista-powered hardware. I can run Ubuntu on a 7 year old P4 machine and get 90% of the functionality of a new iMac, and be permanently free of the infinite loop of charges; or spend $500 on a new Dell with Ubuntu and watch it fly -- could it be that Steve J. plans on being retired by the time this chicken comes home to roost on his company?

In another 20 years, we will be reading about the Youtube-drunk oldsters fading away before the VR chipset-in-the-brain prime dogs.

I've been beating the drum for John from AZ for a while -- does this count? (don't forget to watch the video too!)

Plagiarism? Hardly. No plot, character, setting, or language is being stolen, re-worked, or represented as an original creation. In fact, the author and publishers are clear in their intent: to offer a fun and thorough compendium of Potter-related information drawn from a study of the novels. Barry Bonds might as well be suing the authors of The Baseball Encyclopedia for plagiarizing his name and lifetime statistics. If Rowling wins this suit, literary reference works and literary criticism overall will be endangered. Authors of compendia and criticism on the works of Tolkien, galactic hitchhiker Douglas Adams, Simpsons author Matt Groening, and many more, will be facing disastrous litigation. But those authors know that such reference works generate interest â" they actually draw people to buy the original stuff.

Technology is no more to be blamed for the quotidian failures of our corporate world than is Nature for the death and decline of America's post-Katrina Gulf Coast; or scientists for the unwelcome truth on the endangerment of our planet. The fact is that corporate America has taken technology, an indisputable blessing to humankind, and infected it with its own insipid and careless superficiality...

This is a problem I've noted before (for example, here). I have an equivalent Google page rank with sites with hundreds of times more traffic. In short, I've yet to see the metrics or analytics tool that is truly reliable.

I don't truly rate as a geek, so I typically have more down time than everyone else (you can't be writing requirements and testing all the time, but if you can do it, someone always needs something fixed). So I work on my geek blog for non-geeks, where I try to make ordinary people think about trying out some arctic men's formal wear.

Universal health care, true high speed broadband, an enlightened prison system, a beautiful nation, and now this -- is there anything wrong with Norway??? I sure would like to find out if there is -- that's why I wrote an open petition to their PM.

why did they get rid of brown? Brown looks great on Ubuntu (especially the elephant skin of 7.10). Ah, never mind, those dopes at M$ would use real elephant skin on the music player... view the least-read geek page on the web: http://dailyrevolution.net/?page_id=643

Let me make a suggestion, Mr. Louderback: could it be because you didn't do your damned job in the first place? Instead of taking an objective approach to Vista, you climbed on board its bandwagon without having any valid reason for doing so. In the process, you dragged a lot of your readers into OS hell. This is inexcusable.

As the Stanford boys Branford and Beckstrom would say, this is a starfish moment. Rowling and her pubs are finding out what the RIAA has discovered: that when you stir up hype and then enforce obedience and secrecy, you're asking for trouble from all those people who aren't in on the take. As I mention at the blog, it's one of those feed-the-kids-sugar-and-then-spank-them-for-acting -up scenarios. So, will I be reading it anyway this weekend? You bet.

This unfortunate writer has been bitten by a nargle. Horklump blood is the only antidote. Or you can try this.

I agree with this guy. As we all know, the computers, like our cars, are alive. That's why we talk to them. That's why Apple made design the centerpiece of their HDLC and SDLC: see the piece by the MIT guy here: http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18621/page 1/ Does that make me a mac fanboy? Maybe, though I'd read this before drawing any conclusions: http://www.dailyrevolution.net/2007/07/geek-bless- america.html

Wow, your bar for a rant is pretty low, isn't it? Now I am capable of ranting, mind you (try this). But a post that begins with the words "Please forgive..." is not setting itself up as a rant. In fact, the its/it's error is common even among professional writers and a few editors I've known; so I prefer not to hammer too hard about it.

Please forgive the grammar lesson, but this is the third time I've seen this error this week. And geeks should understand me more than anyone: you work with languages and grammar of your own. "abuse of it's developers" Here's your rule of thumb, author: 1. it's = it is (it's a beautiful day to bash MS) 2. its = belonging to it (its brain had been washed by Ballmer) 3. IT's = ah,now that could be either "belonging to the IT dept." or "I(nformation)T(ech) is..." So the correct spelling of the above would be "abuse of its developers..." --Brian Donohue, dailyrevolution.net