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Have you seen the cost of high-power batteries?
Especially the ones that can survive the strain of driving electric-only (charge-drain-charge-drain)? try $3000,--
Unless you own a Hybrid, according to Car & Driver

"battery replacement will cost $5,300 for the Toyota and Lexus hybrids, and the Ford Escape replacements run a whopping $7,200."

Also, someone needt to make room for those batteries somewhere in the car.
The required equipment (for modifying the car itself) and man-hours also cost money.

With a house you have an agent acting as a proxy.

Except in most cases a real estate agent doesn't really work for the buyer. Unless an agent is specifically hired as a buyer's agent the agent may tell the seller what you tell them. For instance if you are willing to pay $500,000 for a house but try to get the seller to reduce the price to $450,000 the agent may tell the seller you'll pay $500,000. You avoid this by either paying a buyer's agent to represent you or by going through a Realtor.

Falcon

dunked in a vat of whale spunk.

According to the best research I can find in as much as I dared:

1. A vat can have up to 3000L capacity
2. A whale's average load is about 5 gallons, or ~19L
3. That means about 158 "fun times" to fill the vat.
4. Even though a whale can make waves multiple times per day, let's put a practical limit of 8 times.
5. Thus, you'd need about 20 whales to achieve your vat in a day. (Assume you want fresh whale woohoo. Day old might be okay for the purposes of ickiness, but dunking might become difficult over time as it congeals)
6. Given that you won't want to lose a single drop of the deep ocean geyser to the open waters, this'll be done on land, and manually since whales can't reach otherwise.

That's a lot of Shamu Shucking! Not impossible, mind you, but challenging. You'll need a good team with strong muscles, good aim, and earplugs so they aren't driven mad by the cacophony of "ooOOOo" caused by the whalegasms. You'll also need to ensure that the whales are either sufficiently into this, or you have a good supply of whale porn on hand.

And when you're done, if you haven't found some way to make enough money off this so you'll never have to work again, then you aren't trying hard enough.

Lol, I'm soooo old, I never felt
comfortable going from 32col to
80col ala TRaSh-80
=)

That is jest with a lil truth.

Plus I'm one of those that
just cannot parse a long line
of text, so I write like I read.
Must be the ADHD+OCD.

And lastly, I spent a decade
at a newspaper as Production
Manager. I'm sure having to
knock out copy in columns when
coming up on the dropdead has
stuck in the ole grey matter.

[ http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/line_length.htm ]

And I'm certain you don't care
THAT much =)

-AI

"There is some evidence that NASA et al has had astronauts have sex in space, all in the name of science, of course--so I think exoatmospheric porn has already been made."

Sources, please. I have suspicions, but it is just a guess. When I saw the list of shuttle astronauts with pictures from an internal NASA news letter in the early 1980's I circled one picture. http://space.about.com/cs/deceasedastronaut/a/judithresnik.htm

There's also price. Of course pandora has many more features, perhaps a comparison is in order. @#$!@#$ slashdot doesn't support tables, so this is the best I could do :

Pandora

Pandora
ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz CPU
128M ram
3D opengl ES 2.0 acceleration
800x480 4.3" touchscreen LCD
Wifi
Keyboard
dual SDHC card (both expansion and storage)
Internal battery and USB charger
$329.99 / £199.99 (Inc VAT) / E249.99 (Inc VAT)

GP2x WIZ

Wiz
533Mhz ARM CPU
64M ram
3D opengl acceleration
OLED Touch Screen 2.8" 320x200
No wifi (BUT easy to add because of USB host)
No keyboard (BUT again, easy to add because of USB host)
single SD card (both expansion and storage, 99% sure SDHC card)
Internal battery and USB charger (thank God ! compared to GP2X F-200 this is heaven)

US$ 179.90 (~124.32 EUR)

PSP

PSP
PSP cpu 333Mhz
32M ram (64M for the psp slim)
3D acceleration (?)
480x272 LCD screen (great screen imho)
Wifi
MS pro duo expansion (expensive, only storage)
Internal battery and USB charger
Probably USB host capability but not useable

US$ 213.99 (179 euro)

Surprisingly of all these devices it's the PSP that has the largest library of emulators (even a "somewhat playable" n64 emu, something the pandora devs think impossible (read the gp2x forums ... well ... euhm tomorrow should be better, right ?)

As an ebook reader the PSP blows the socks of the WIZ though, even if just because of larger screen, and it is also larger than the pandora, so I wonder.

This list is limited to devices with actual useable gaming controls. The iphone/ipod touch and the nokia n810 are obvious competitors, but lack (decent) gaming controls. Actually the n810 is kinda nice, I ought to try one.

My company had a security meeting a while back. During the meeting (unknown to us) someone scattered some thumb drives around the parking lot. Two days later we had a follow up meeting. More than 50 people had picked up the thumb-drives and plugged them into their work computers. The security team knew this because they put a "virus" on the thumb-drives that sent them some info about each computer it was plugged into. Each person even got specifically called out at the follow-up meeting too.

That's how they taught us about unsafe outside devices. Seemed to work pretty well too.

On that note too, if your company maintains their own images, it's probably best to disable autorun. antivirus.about.com has some good instructions on doing that.

In my opinion, that should be just as standard as showing file extensions.

The more you educate your staff about the "whys" of security, the more likely they are to follow your security protocols. You can't just tell someone not to do something. You need to tell them WHY they shouldn't do it too. You can't learn from other peoples' mistakes if you don't know why it was a mistake. For example, say you walked into a room and someone said, "Don't touch this shiny cool looking thing." You'd be more much more likely to try to pick it up than if he or she said, "Don't touch this shiny cool looking thing because it's really hot."

Grace Hopper, a.k.a. Grandma Cobol

Back a few months, Sony sent out a press release, stating "Pricing for rental movies at launch ranges from $2.99 to $5.99, and pricing for purchased movies ranges from $9.99 to $14.99" I'd check the pricing on the video store, but the site requires Java to work at all.

They tout that you can copy these videos to your PSP, but that doesn't sound too hard to do yourself (check here for a more detailed how-to, if the first one sounded too easy =)

So pretty much, it's just like so many other video download sites that don't really offer much of a savings off of buying slightly discounted physical copies. And if you wait long enough, you're bound to find someone re-selling their physical copy for a fraction of retail (or download) price.

You sound like a schoolboy denying he has a crush on a cute girl. She is SO hot. I would shag that chic rotten. Besides, where are your manners? Under pretty much any circumstance, it's impolite to call other people "hideous."

Anyway... is there even a question? I'm one of those centrist swing voters. You know, the kind of voters that decide the election. From where I stand, I see both parties voting the same way on pretty much everything. FISA, offshore drilling, you name it. Since they're both pretty much the same, it's four years of old men or VP MILF? Hmmm.... Sarah Palin or Barack Hussein Obama ... That's not a tough choice. VPILF Palin, hands down!

My post speeled it incorrectly to continue the parodee of programing forum posts, not in the ultrahip reference to this guy

. Although, I'm sure he's a frequent contributor to the user submitted php manual notes.

http://z.about.com/d/space/1/0/c/e/earth_moon.jpg

of an extrasolar planet. I think it would be amazing and hopefully spur people's imaginations to see beyond themselves.

Any astronomers out there care to speculate on the feasibility getting an image like this?

Please don't cite private letters, but actual documents with legal standing; thank you.

Private correspondence says what they meant, as do public writings such as the Federalist Papers and various tracts and books such as Thomas Paine's "The Crisis", which he wrote while he served under George Washington's command. Unfortunately too many people twist what the Constitution means so it says what they want it to say, the only way to know what the Founding Fathers meant by something is by reading their writings, pub;ic and private.

I am not American

I apologize then. It's still a good idea to read what the Founding Fathers wrote though to get an idea of what they meant. I don't think you are but if you're French I'd suggest Thomas Paine, in "The Rights Of Man" he passionately defends the French Revolution. Unfortunately people like Teddy Roosevelt called Paine an atheist though he, like Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, was a Deist.

Falcon

200,000, one of the lower estimates, is not "a few thousand". A Wicca site has an article about the best estimates of the number of witches executed.

When claiming to have the truth, or facts, a citation might be nice instead of a bald statement of fact.

I am only on a campaign to stop needless FUD, not to promote either president (both of which seem to have no interest in our monetary policy, massive debt, or personal or economic freedom, my personal issues). That said, I do highly respect Sarah for sticking to her beliefs when other politicians would be long lost.

If you are willing to cite facts and respectfully disagree, I respect you.

The NYT story was published eight days after this one from her hometown: http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2008/09/05/breaking_news/doc48c1c8a60d6d9379155484.txt which claims she never attempted anything. I would take this story with as much caution as I do the New York Times, coming from an area where she has an 80% approval rating, and the NYT story coming from an area dramatically opposed. It is an account from (an otherwise unheard of) Laura Chase, I cannot find any sources to back it up. This article (which I hope is a little more neutral) mostly agrees with the Wasilla story, and comes a day after the NYT story, http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/09/14/while-mayor-did-palin-ban-books.htm

I did a search for author "Michael Willhoite" and the book "Daddy's roommate" over their catalog http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=72 , and the only one in the library network is kept in Talkeetna, 70 miles away. Either the book was eventually removed, or relocated, or it never existed. I won't assume any one though. The book certainly could have existed during that time period however.

What are you trying to say here? It doesn't make any sense. Lives don't matter? Make believe world? How does that relate to the Cold War?

The first part of that, I didn't say. You did. You're confused when I say that your country doesn't care about life? Why, that's what we have been talking about the whole time.

I said nothing about the world being better under communism. You want to pretend that the cold war wasn't a pissing contest you go right ahead. You are a victim of propaganda if you do.

How does that have anything to do with terrorists from the Middle East taking over US commercial aircraft 20 years later in the 1970s?

You must be kidding me. That or you really have no idea what is going on.

The war, WW2, came to us. We didn't ask Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, any more than we asked Germany to attack our shipping in the Atlantic.

Exactly. The rest of the world was already trying to defend Europe when you cowards did business with the Nazi's and refused to get involved. Not until you got dragged in to the war did you stick up for anybody.

Erm, ok, I'll use that style of argument...

"Feeding the malnourished world would cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race prefers to go into space while leaving others to starve, then it doesn't deserve the epithet 'human'."

We're both engaging in the No True Scotsman fallacy.

I give up on this thread. I welcome differing opinions but no-one's really addressing my points - instead I'm seeing a tendency to think in binary. Just because I don't agree with the direction science often takes, it doesn't mean I'm anti-science; just because CERN isn't an official EU-sanctioned project, it doesn't mean it isn't in practical terms an EU(+CH) project.

The requirement to give the fruits of your labour to a state which passes on those riches to the mentally/physically fittest then tells you that it's for the good of *some higher cause* but that you wouldn't understand is the underlying premise of fascism. Maybe you agree with the "higher cause" today and maybe it benefits you, but when the same method is used to lead you into an unpopular war or an economic crisis, do you still lie back and take it? First they came, etc.

Google is getting in everybody's space

While Google's there when I want it, they aren't in my space.

Google's products are not generally better, (often flakey or worse (consider google docs and gmail - so what? the only advantage they offer is that they are free

Unless your employer, or you for that matter, demand you use Google's apps you don't have to. Even if you want free software, a lot of the software on my computer is open source, I have none of Google's software on it. I don't even use gmail.

They have already destroyed the search market because only crazy people would start up a search company and go up against them.

Google has gained dominance in searches because it offers better searches than most other search engines. However the new SE Cuil looks pretty good too. I haven't really used it yet but I also use About.com, Alta Vista, Teoma, oops Ask.com, and Open Directory Project for searches.

They are busily destroying most other markets too.

And what markets are these?

Falcon

'here are strategic reasons to not want a single source for a critical material. There are no such strategic reasons relating to Google.'

I'd rate data as pretty critical

I can, and do, go to Teoma, oops Ask.com, About.com, Alta Vista, and Dmoz Open Directory Project for searches. And I may start using Cuil as well for searching. Google isn't the only search engine, nor does it have lockin, other than being a good search engine. Actually I use About.com because Google referred me to it, when I first googled for "Monte Verde" archeology the top result was About.com's section of Monte Verde. Now it's number three. Googling for photography returns About.com as number 4.

While data may be, is critical, it can be gotten from search engines other than Google.

Falcon

'here are strategic reasons to not want a single source for a critical material. There are no such strategic reasons relating to Google.'

I'd rate data as pretty critical

I can, and do, go to Teoma, oops Ask.com, About.com, Alta Vista, and Dmoz Open Directory Project for searches. And I may start using Cuil as well for searching. Google isn't the only search engine, nor does it have lockin, other than being a good search engine. Actually I use About.com because Google referred me to it, when I first googled for "Monte Verde" archeology the top result was About.com's section of Monte Verde. Now it's number three. Googling for photography returns About.com as number 4.

While data may be, is critical, it can be gotten from search engines other than Google.

Falcon

'here are strategic reasons to not want a single source for a critical material. There are no such strategic reasons relating to Google.'

I'd rate data as pretty critical

I can, and do, go to Teoma, oops Ask.com, About.com, Alta Vista, and Dmoz Open Directory Project for searches. And I may start using Cuil as well for searching. Google isn't the only search engine, nor does it have lockin, other than being a good search engine. Actually I use About.com because Google referred me to it, when I first googled for "Monte Verde" archeology the top result was About.com's section of Monte Verde. Now it's number three. Googling for photography returns About.com as number 4.

While data may be, is critical, it can be gotten from search engines other than Google.

Falcon

Hybrid Battery life: 8-10 years and 80,000 - 150,000 miles: http://alternativefuels.about.com/od/hybridvehicles/f/hybridfaq3.htm

http://inkampus.com/

Actually, that's a decent analogy, as TV was a series of inventions by many people

Science cannot discredit.

Sure it can. Otherwise the "Turtles All the Way Down" idea would be viewed exactly on par with modern astronomy, geophysics and the like.

No it can't. Science builds positive evidence. It cannot generate negative evidence (nothing can except logical exclusion). Modern astronomy has greater standing than the "turtles all the way down" idea because it has considerable positive evidence. The "turtles all the way down" idea has none.

But there's still a significant difference between having no evidence and being logically disproven by exclusion. Someone could argue that the turtles don't show up in photos, or they turn invisible when we're looking. As outlandish as they are, they are still valid theories. Just like quantum physics was initially seen as outlandish ("God does not play dice") before becoming generally accepted.

It can't prove that reindeer cannot fly. It can't prove that bigfoot doesn't exist. It can't prove the world isn't flat. Science can't prove a negative.

Dude, you forfeited any credibility with that sentence. There is exactly zero evidence for "flying raindeer". Zero credible evidence for bigfoot. There is however plenty of evidence for earth not being flat. And science can quite conclusively prove that Earth is not flat. It can even demonstrate its actual shape.

At some point, every theory has zero credible evidence. They were just a brainstorm. If you put everything with zero credible evidence in the same category as disproven things, then science would never get anywhere because every theory by definition starts with zero credible evidence.

You are completely confused as to what "proving the negative" means. It refers to an idea of demonstrating that something does not exist, not to demonstrating that something is one way or another. Since neither "flying reindeer" nor bigfoot are proven to exist, nothing can be said about these, nor any other imaginary creatures.

Fine, then call it the theory that reindeer are able to fly, not the theory that flying reindeer exist. You cannot disprove the theory that reindeer are able to fly. The only thing you can do is prove the theory that reindeer are able to fly.

I weep for the future of science, and that your bizarre ideas are being modded insightful on slashdot of all places. I beg of you, please read up on positive and negative proof before you continue spreading your mistaken ideas and further damage the credibility of science.

Cuil did the same to me as Google has done. Using cuil.com I search for photography and the second result is About.com. Searching for Monte Verde and About.com's Monte Verde section is on the first page, the 10th result.

Falcon

Cuil did the same to me as Google has done. Using cuil.com I search for photography and the second result is About.com. Searching for Monte Verde and About.com's Monte Verde section is on the first page, the 10th result.

Falcon

Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'?

Google is good for blogs but like you say I don't think it's that good for message boards or forums. Alta Vista gives me better results there. What I find weird is that when I've done some searches on Google the top results were from About.com, specifically searching on topics about photography and archaeology or anthropology. Google for monte verde and Google's first result is Tom Dillehay on the First People in South America.

Falcon

Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'?

Google is good for blogs but like you say I don't think it's that good for message boards or forums. Alta Vista gives me better results there. What I find weird is that when I've done some searches on Google the top results were from About.com, specifically searching on topics about photography and archaeology or anthropology. Google for monte verde and Google's first result is Tom Dillehay on the First People in South America.

Falcon

Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'?

Google is good for blogs but like you say I don't think it's that good for message boards or forums. Alta Vista gives me better results there. What I find weird is that when I've done some searches on Google the top results were from About.com, specifically searching on topics about photography and archaeology or anthropology. Google for monte verde and Google's first result is Tom Dillehay on the First People in South America.

Falcon

Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'?

Google is good for blogs but like you say I don't think it's that good for message boards or forums. Alta Vista gives me better results there. What I find weird is that when I've done some searches on Google the top results were from About.com, specifically searching on topics about photography and archaeology or anthropology. Google for monte verde and Google's first result is Tom Dillehay on the First People in South America.

Falcon

No, there's plenty of natural gas. Known reserves worldwide are about 172 trillion m^3. One m^3 of gas has about as much energy as one liter of oil (38.4 MJ/m^3 vs 38.6 MJ/l).

So 172 trillion m^3 of gas is the energy equivalent of about 172 trillion liters of oil = 1.47 trillion barrels of oil.

Worldwide oil consumption is about 80.29 million barrels per day, or about 30 billion barrels per year.

So if we could instantaneously convert all our oil consumption into natural gas consumption, the known gas reserves would last us 49 years. There's plenty of gas.

The problem with natural gas is its extremely low volumetric energy density. That makes it expensive to store and transport. It's such a hassle that a lot of oil wells (especially offshore) simply burn any extraneous gas which comes up with the oil, instead of trying to capture and store it. The 3600 psi CNG tank in a Honda Civic GX CNG takes up most of the trunk, and only provides as much energy as 8 gallons of gasoline.

I'm sick of people calling out Bush for a slow response to Katrina. There's plenty to dislike about Bush we don't need to make crap up.

For anyone who for some reason doesn't know this: The federal government cannot go in and provide aid in a place like post-Katrina New Orleans unless the governor asks for it. It's against the law and the very basic nature of our country for the federal government to just go and do that kind of stuff.

What I'm sick of is people making up crap without citation to defend GWB. "Title 10 U.S.C. 12301(a) provides that, in time of war or national emergency declared by the Congress, the entire membership of all reserve components or any lesser number can be called to active duty for the duration of the war or national emergency plus 6 months."

Problem this time is, the US and Europe aren't going to let Russia roll their tanks into every Eastern European nation bulldozing their people into submission.

Of course we will. You don't see any U.S. peacekeepers on their way to Georgia, do you? Well, except maybe for the other Georgia just in case the hurricane goes four or five hundred miles to the east before it makes landfall, that is.... :-)

Okay, to be fair, if they start to encroach on Georgia's oil fields, the U.S. might get involved. The rest of those former Soviet states, though---the ones who aren't sitting on oil---I think it's safe to say they're on their own. I'm not saying it's right; I'm just saying that if you think the current U.S. government is going to lift a finger to help anybody without it being for their own significant political gain, you've clearly been living under a rock the last eight years.

Bush Presidency Countdown Clock

Fool me... you can't get fooled again....

http://crime.about.com/b/2006/10/24/houston-homicide-rate-attributed-to-katrina.htm

Get a hint, with good Civil, mechanical and maritime engineers you can adequately manage far greater storms. The problem with New Orleans was that we had been spending money building fancy bridges, stadiums and government buildings down there that could weather a 4+ hurricane all the while ignoring the levees and other flood control systems that protected 90% of the city. Now some of those homes are going to be destroyed when that hurricane rolls over but even that we can build for, what we need to require for residents rebuilding this time is that they build structures that are made to withstand hurricanes, floods and moisture; the last one because if you have ever owned a house anywhere humid the first thing to go is untreated wood and even treated wood goes after 25 years or so outside. They have solutions out there already, and if we mandated that if you live in a hurricane alley you build something like that we would not have to have these mass evacuations. What we really need is a president who is not scared of spending on such a system that would protect New Orleans against hurricanes, expand our research into earthquakes for the west coast and other disasters.

This "article" does not state whether or not you just have to show up or actually vote. Can you leave the choices blank so as to express your total disinterest in the selected candidates? Thanks.

According to About.com:

It is known so far that the messages are originating from Moscow, Russia (note the fractured grammar, indicating they were written by non-English speakers) ...

FBI agent: there's only one country that has english grammar this bad...

Police Detective: The Russians!

Police Detective: I'll start right away tracking down this "potus@whitehouse.gov". That pesky rusky can't fool us with his cartoonishly bad english!

According to About.com:

It is known so far that the messages are originating from Moscow, Russia (note the fractured grammar, indicating they were written by non-English speakers) ...

FBI agent: there's only one country that has english grammar this bad...

Police Detective: The Russians!

FBI agent: exactly. It's either them or Mrs. Gleason's 8th grade english class.

Police Detective: But the Russians have rock solid alibis.

FBI agent: let's lean on the kids, and see if any of them get nervous.

It is known so far that the messages are originating from Moscow, Russia (note the fractured grammar, indicating they were written by non-English speakers) and are being emailed to addresses apparently selected from professional databases (i.e., targeting recipients who presumably have the resources to pay an extortionist).

I wouldn't expect to receive one of these unless you're wealthy and there's material out on the net attesting to the fact.

The M-107 enables Army snipers to accurately engage personnel and material targets out to a distance of 1,500 to 2,000 meters respectively - M-107 Long Range Sniper Rifle

The muzzle velocity of such a rifle seems to be about 1 kilometer per second (M16 rifle), and also there's the one-per-second frame rate, so this scope seems best suited to assassinations, where your target is out in the open and stationary.

Welcome to identity theft, modern style.

Not 'eminent domain', but 'easement'. Eminent Domain is where the government can force you to sell the property. Easement is where the state/county/city/town/what ever has it written into law that there is an area around your property (typically at the street) where they can run various things. You know, water, sewer, electricity, telephone and other things. The cable companies also purchased/leased a portion of it from the locality to run cable there as well. Here's more info. Remember, this is something that has existed for decades and is nothing new.

Not sure why the above person got modded down. We shouldn't be arguing against anything, this is a discussions page not a junior-high debate team. NASA's job isn't just to get to space and do research on space. NASA's job is also to accomplish new things, and research craft, people, engineering, manufacture, provide markets and test new-tech. The Apollo Project was the first large commercial client for integrated-circuits and contributed to EVERYTHING that has followed. Apollo was the first real-use of bar-codes for tracking things. The examples could go on, hard defibulators, photo analysis for mapping which was in turn used for medicine.... Apollo changed everything for western-civilization, wasn't just a pretty experiment. Would the research have happened on it's own? Sure, at a much slower rate. A human rated Solid-Rocket-Booster is a new thing, and will be a big accomplishment. SRBs will be cheaper and safer if they can be pulled off for human flight. Like in the Challenger disaster, although they actually caused the failure, they continued to fly afterwards, you can see in the pictures where they flew off. The SRBs survived the ~almost nuclear level explosion~ and continued their flights independently, breaking into only a few large and recognizable pieces: http://history1900s.about.com/od/photographs/ig/Space-Shuttle-Challenger/Rocket-Booster-Debris.htm . Was Ares 1 going to be a challenge for NASA? Yes, and they knew it. And, that's a good thing. Even if the dampening springs are a temporary solution to the burn-wake SRB issue, it's a step in a good direction allowing other things to proceed, while NASA continues to work on a long-term fix. How do you smooth out super-heated, fast-moving gas/plasma? That is a very good question which will have far reaching uses, from materials design, manufacturing, rapid-protyping, even Nuclear fusion :) Even if NASA does not succeed, the research is worth-while. They are doing this precisely because it is hard.

Fascinating, but polyamory in San Francisco isn't exactly a representative sample of polygamy worldwide.

That was just one example. There are plenty of others, in the US at least. Try these:

1. The Polyamory Society
2. Sev on polyamory
3. Poly Potluck Discussion Group of Greater Seattle and Western Washington
4. Polyamory Archive
5. Twin Cities Polyamory Discussion Group
6. PolyOrlando
7. Poly Matchmaker

And those are just from my bookmarks. About.com, which is also in my bookmarks, has more.

Falcon

And polyandry (when one woman has multiple men) would be great, too. I don't believe in god, why the heck should I be bound by judeo-christian practice of monogamy?

As fun as it is to bash Christians and as many reasons you might think of to justify it, this is not one of them.

Monogamy has been around long before Judeo-Christians. It actually has a very strong evolutionary basis. Your DNA wants to propagate itself. So it wants to ensure that your wealth or property or cave or hut or spear is passed on to your genetic offspring. Since DNA tests are a relatively new development, monogamy was a pretty good attempt to ensure you knew who your offspring were back in the day. Many ancient polytheistic civilizations (think ancient Greece) had marriage as monogamist pairing.

I don't think people are aware what implications this could have for what really could exist 'out there'.

If the natural laws are quite different in many other universes, warp travel, time travel could be possible, or even life itself could be much more common or varied, and it could be easier perhaps, to travel far, in other universes than our own. Energy-based life-forms, even "gods" in the meaning of very powerful beings, which have spread out in the galaxies and taking control, might exist. They might exist here too, however the physical constants of our universe makes it very cumbersome to travel and communicate, and radiation is also a problem, so it seems like we are somewhat alone in our corner of the galaxy. That is, unless this is correct!

Thus - the 'reality' of some of our science fiction stories could be true in other universes, while we live in a "boring" one with few means of transportation and (quick) communication over long distances. Even the brane we reside upon seem to be very stiff, since gravity waves haven't been observed (yet), so no easy wormhole solutions for transportation seem feasible with moderate amounts of energy. Even though other universes probably never can be observed directly, this is exciting stuff, hopefully we will be able to collect at least indirect evidence of other universes, perhaps with some of the experiments done in the big hadron collider.

Do you have any idea how long it took me to figure out what your current sig means?
"echo -e 'global _start \n _start: \n mov eax, 2 \n int 80h \n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a; a

Here's some help for others who are wondering:
This explains what assembly language is: http://www.int80h.org/
This explains what INT 80h does: http://www.f13-labs.net/virus/linuxAsmWindows.htm
This explains what AX=2 does: http://docs.cs.up.ac.za/programming/asm/derick_tut/syscalls.html
And this explains what NASM is: http://linux.about.com/cs/linux101/g/nasm.htm

For the love of God, we're geeks and this made me loose about 10 minutes of work (translation: "reading Slashdot") today; now I'll have to do overtime and there's been an article regarding OT issues on Slashdot today which made me realize I should stop reading other people's sigs and I shouldn't use sigs that seem to mean something when they really don't.


--
Help, I'm addicted to /. sigs!

Interesting. Have you worked for companies that don't have a unionized work force? Then no doubt you've met people with good attitudes and work ethics that have passed over for promotion while those who put in far less effort are rewarded because they have a connection or some more billets on their resume. No doubt you've also seen people suffer no consequences for misconduct that would have gotten you written up or fired because they're on good terms with their supervisor. If you've been in the work force for a while, I'm sure you can think of several examples. So why wouldn't those cases be proof of how businesses are a failure? And you complain about unions holding back your inner leetness when it comes to compensation, yet companies have their pay scales. It doesn't matter if your ability matches your ego, because the company will only pay you a max of $X per year for the position you are at.

Workers in unions earn more than those who don't, straight up. You're sacrificing increased pay, benefits and job security in favor of an illusion. You might make $4 less per hour, have worse insurance and less vacation time, but you've saved yourself a thousand dollars a year in union dues! Brilliant!

Chemistry for chemistry's sake has been banned all along. Check out this article on how to get your banned pdf copy of one cool 1960s chemistry book with some not-so-cool experiments...

If it is a theory, then we can apply this idea called "scientific method" and develop a testable hypothesis, and then... Wait, the flat earth idea has been shown to be false: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth and Earth is an oblate spheroid. "Round" could be interpreted as like a circle and two-dimensional, just those flat-earth people want you to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth These flat earth "alchemists" are just like those who claim that human activities could never affect the climate http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics, there are endless oil supplies on earth for human consumption, http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm, HIV does not cause AIDS http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/not/abstract.htm, and the only way to study whales is to kill them and sell the meat in the supermarket http://www.icrwhale.org/QandAjapanresearch.htm. Aaahhh these fucking assholes.