Slashdot Mirror

In other words, it's fine to steal things as long as they're of low value. I'm fairly certain the hotel *could* have me arrested for stealing their soap, it's just not usually worth their time.

In the hotels I usually stay in you're invited to take the soap/shampoo/conditioner etc.

I've got some rather nice shampoo and conditioner at home now from my most recent stay in a hotel, ironically, one that used to be a prison and I was staying in one of the cells (actually three cells knocked into a single room) with the original metal studded door (although you can open the door from the inside and the peephole looks out rather than in)

http://www.malmaison-oxford.com/the-hotel/architecture

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2077/2110748750_f0f86a21fa.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/67596892%40N00/2110748750&h=500&w=375&sz=122&tbnid=YfqUxyrH4O0-BM::&tbnh=130&tbnw=98&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmalmaison%2Boxford%2Bimages&hl=en&usg=__6NfZj9MmXRT88WAWGDKWStGjHn0=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image&cd=1

Tim.

LD50 as I remember from my work in the nuclear industry is the amount of a substance that causes death in 50% of a population. Whether that's by cancer or not doesn't matter.

A simple google query starts off with four articles, two of which say the cancer risk from cannabis is high, and two that don't.

It's pretty dishonest, and likely wishful thinking on the part of cannabis users, to claim that there is "no risk of cancer." Remember, "low" and "lower" than tobacco does not mean "zero" or "negligible."

Until there are some good data on the issue, it's pretty irresponsible to go about saying that there is no risk of cancer from cannabis use.

There is a risk of cancer from many things, heck even living causes death eventually. I've taken more than my fair share of unhealthy food and I like to drink alcohol. But I don't go around pretending there is no cancer risk.

I've done open standpipe working over two nuclear reactors. I put (by hand) video cameras into the reactor cores. There was a cancer risk there too. It was incredibly low, though, tens of thousands of times lower than regularly smoking cigarettes.

I don't smoke cigarettes, or any kind of tobacco, but I have in the past (less than 10 in total) and passively-smoked by going to pubs, clubs, restaurants and gigs.

Most people who take cannabis smoke it mixed in with tobacco. There is a direct cancer risk there from the tobacco and the cannabis. There is also the serious issue of nicotine addiction. Yes, kids, nicotine is more addictive than heroin.

Many a young person starts off smoking a few joints at the weekend with friends and becomes addicted to nicotine. That's a big win for the tobacco industry.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=vista+wake+from+hibernation+bug

No, Devizes. A small English town well-known for its high population of bioscientists :)

I've been keeping an eye on the search results for YouTube videos silenced by WMG from it's original report on an earlier slashdot discussion of 13,600 videos, right now the number is at 294,000 videos and a lot of them have now been removed.

Looks like WMG are losing out on a very BIG advertising revenue stream by removing almost 1/3 million videos, and the number will most likely grow (1/2 million? 1 million?). If they had any intelligence they'd have turned this debacle into a new revenue stream. A lot of the videos silenced/removed have had millions of views, I certainly wouldn't say no to that level of page views if I could make money from it.

"Don't be ridiculous. The NSA isn't monitoring your private communications, Mr. Rowland...uh, I mean anonymous coward."

Who needs the NSA when we have Google and the Internet in general. ;)

For example, Initial profile of elrous0

elrous0, who is a subscriber to Slashdot has made (so far) 13 posts to Slashdot on Jan 22 and 10 posts on Jan 21 (impressive, I hope your boss doesn't read Slashdot ;)

elrous0 doesn't like Google...
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=501552&cid=22881924 ... which is unfortunate as Google likes you ;)
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&q=elrous0+slashdot ... elrous0 shows a willingness to commit a political Thought Crime in a Slashdot forum...
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234873&cid=19144297 ... tut-tut ;)

Also by employing the concepts of traffic analysis, a sub-domain of signals intelligence...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signals_intelligence ... We can then see elrous0 communicates on Slashdot during the times of someone on the East coast of America.

Plus while the link cannot yet be confirmed, elrous0 was likely at The University of Kentucky between at least August 20th 2004 and 03-05-2008
assuming elrous0@pop.uky.edu is your email address. (Thank Google for that link ;) ... of course, this link isn't yet confirmed, but we wait for confirmation of your location, through any post we can find linking elrous0 with Kentucky ;)
(Which incidentally also fits with the idea of someone living on the East coast of America ;)

While I'm joking, this 20 minute Google for fun, does illustrate a point about the growing information on all of us.

Plus if the NSA was really profiling you, then as you are a subscriber to Slashdot, then your credit card records (which very commonly get sold by credit card companies) are likely to link you to your Slashdot posts (and other forum subscriptions).

Also is you are/were in Kentucky, then you are lucky, because if you were in for example, Australia or England, then some time in 2009, (if not already), they would be able to profile each of your posts every day (almost in real time as you make them), building up an ever more detailed list of your interests and dislikes. Of course they probably wouldn't profile your posts in real time, unless initial profiles of you, indicate you are likely to take part in potential opposition to political views. In which case, they will want to watch you more closely, just in case you take part in more political opposition such as organizing a rally etc..

George Orwell's instruction manual is becoming ever more useful ;)

What specifically are you trying to achieve? Do you know that (parts of) files you wish to recover are specifically stored in the blocks that are giving read errors? Or are you just trying to get a good copy of the whole disc? If the latter, then you might well be able to get away with using something like ddrescue which can ignore the bad sectors if they don't read correctly after a number of retries. If the former, then I imagine you'll need to look into whether the drive has an interface to the onboard controller (e.g. via RS232 like some Seagate models). As far as I can see, SpinRite is functionally equivalent to ddrescue with modern drives, but may be more useful for old RLL or MFM drives.

I wouldn't particularly bless Samsung on the basis of their consumer electronics experience; some of their products appear to have design faults, for example their HT-DB120 home theatre system which seems to be widely known for spontaneously dying with a 'PROTECTION' front panel message. I had one of these systems and it died about a month outside of the two year warranty. Calling Samsung was an exercise in futility; they simply didn't want to know. To make matters worse, getting at the power amplifier section (which is where I believe the problem lies) would require a big disassembly job as heatsink screws are obscured by the heatsinks for other 5.1 amplifier channels.

Knee-jerk idiocy?

OK, I didn't RTFA and didn't know that the blacklist wasn't government run. Yet. I have no problem believing that the government don't freakin love it, and will probably soon make it goverment run/a legal requirement.

Anyway, what I personally find more scary is biometric ID cards (homeoffice.gov), biometric passports (ips.gov.uk), and the latest ISP snooping law (bbc.co.uk) to name a few, all coupled with numerous unpunished breaches in data security (google.com)

All in the name of stopping "the terrorists". It might give you a fuzzy warm feeling, after all, you have nothing to hide, right?

Yes, I was in a hurry this morning and did indeed miss your references.

These things happen. The trick is to not just assume the worst, and double check to see if you perhaps missed something...

Above, you cite your temperature data source as
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
but in the Wiki entry, the stated source of temperature data is
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/solanki2004-ssn.txt

Well yes, I was discussing the figure I linked first in my comment: the graph which demonstrates the lack of correlation between sunspots and the most recent warming, while showing the greater correlation in overall trend with CO2. That is, this one. You'll note that that temperature data is indeed from the CRU. This, of course also explains why the sunspot data is different, and also why I mention CO2 data. A perusal of all the figures I linked would probably have made this clear very quickly...

Along that line, there is no explanation as to how deuterium data relates to sunspots. Is it a linear relationship? How would a reader know?

Well, for that figure I would presume anyone actually curious about such details would manage to note that the delta-deuterium data is a proxy for temperature not sunspots, and to try a simple search on the relevant terms. They'll rapidly pull up things like this, which should get them started (and answer your question off the bat -- yes, it is a linear relationship). After all, that's how I learned any of this.

My point being that considering just the information that was presented, as I saw it, even WITH the two sources you referenced, does not exactly prove anything.

Well no, the second figure showing data for the last 10000 years simply shows that there is some general correlation between solar activity and sunspots (though it is imperfect). It was the first figure that counts: it shows that while there may have been good correlation historically, the current warming trend does not correlate at all well with sunpots, but instead correlates rather better than with CO2 -- exactly the opposite of your original claims.

Is anybody else suddenly reminded of Talkie Toaster?

I've had problems with both Netgear and Linksys routers, usually because of the cheap PSU's they use. Put it on a UPS and haven't had to reboot my home Linksys or Netgear (WRT54G and DG834N WDS'd together) in years now.

Mostly seems to stem from power fluctuations, google search brings up nothing specific, but anecdotal evidence on my part and some customers seem to agree. Anyone else have this?

Seems a lot of 4gb cards are SDHC and/or don't work in non-HC cardslots.

A quick google search, a Sandisk FAQ and even the Wikipedia article we both referenced state "SDHC allows standard-compliant capacities in excess of 2 GB." seem to suggest this might be the case.

Kingston even state SDHC starts at 4gb. Not claiming I understand why, but I've had some experience of 4gb cards not working in non-SDHC, some cameras don't seem to like anything more than 2GB. YMMV! HTH!

Just because its more distracting doesn't mean its bad for you.

Yes it does. The ancient equivalent of a city would be on the veldt surrounded by predators. You are constantly on edge looking for the flash of colour which could mean you're on the menu. Your ears are straining to hear the danger signals through the constant noise. Constant exposure to such stress is very wearing and can result in various nervous malfunctions and lead to physical manifestations. Ever heard of hypertension ?

I recently (6 months ago) gave up driving a truck (18 wheeler for the US residents) because although the physical act of driving was easy, the mental stress of being abused by just about everybody else on the road led to me being pissed off the whole time. Once you get into that condition, you need serious training in Buddhism to learn to relax. I haven't had the training, and I still can't drive (even a car) without getting stressed almost immediately, and it has even affected me as a pedestrian. All this is happening to a person who in 2001/2002 drove across the US 3 times (FL -> WA, WA -> FL, FL -> CA) in a month and a half for fun, then drove almost all the way around Australia, then travelled all the way round NZ by bus. Hint: it's not the driving or travelling.

The human mind can't stand up to being attacked all the time. My condition is starting to become agoraphobic as it is impossible to go anywhere without encountering traffic. I recently spent time in Scotland, well away from large population centres, and it was like a large dose of valium. I was completely relaxed within a day or so. Unfortunately I still have to earn a living so moving there permanently isn't an option right now. And not having worked for 6 months means my savings are almost exhausted and my options are dwindling to zero.

Just because you don't notice the effect, it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. It is cumulative and one day it will hit you hard. Your brain gets used to the default state of mind being stress, and suddenly one day it gets stuck there. Very hard to get back from, and very hard to withstand real stress when it occurs, because you have so little energy left in reserve.

Ok, I called your bluff. I actually went and searched for it.

The VERY top link is this slashdot article which states:

"We've all heard the story of Microsoft's battle cry of "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run". Adam Barr investigates the myth, interviewing various Microsoft and Lotus old-timers (including Mitch Kapor), and finds no basis for its legitimacy or any case of 1-2-3 actually not running. Whom to blame for Lotus Notes is not discussed."

I checked the next few links and they pretty much all pointed to the same article, namely this one. One site even described it as a "complete and utter annihilation of the myth".

I actually thought you were disagreeing with me, but now I see you were pointing out that people have been claiming the same thing for years and it was just as unfounded then as it is now. Thank you, I couldn't have said it better myself.

They could recover much of the data from the Google cache.

56,200 results, the first few at least seem to be intact and useful.

I'd grab them while I could if I was Journalspace.

YouTube labelled the ad, "IBM Linux ad: Prodigy" so I was watching the thing waiting for the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" soundtrack to kick in (vid unsafe for work), and all the old guys to explode or catch on fire or something as the kid chucked the chair through the blank white backdrop and escaped out of the boring white set into a more interesting "colour" future.

About 2/3 of the way through, I realised that it wasnt going to happen, and the Boring Old Farts with the platitudes "Don't strive for excellence strive to be a better team player, etc." were supposed to be for real. Sheesh. This is supposed to be inspirational? What's the kid in the ad supposed to be "inspired" to do? Slit his wrists at the futility of life when he hits fourteen?

You missed the nano.
52.22000 (kW hour) = 1.55416667 x 10^-7 GW fortnights (same as your answer)
Converted into nanofortnights (not recognised by google :( ) gives 155.416667 GW nano-fortnights.

Incidentally that's a different number to everyone else who's tried to do the conversion so far.
We've had:
155,416.667 GWnFn (used 52220 instead of 52.220 kWh)
1.55416667 * 10^-7 GWnFn (actually GWFn, forgot to nano)
17545920 GWnFn (actually GW/nFn)
1.74x10^-11 GWnFn (actually nGW/Fn)

Off topic, but your .sig needs an update :)

The xbox360 is certainly more prone to scratching than any other device I've ever had. I've never seen a scratch in a disc like the one it made. If Microsoft knew about it (they certainly know now!), I would hope they've fixed it in the current builds, because its a serious design flaw.

I bet they haven't, but I also bet that it's another factor - besides the death of HD-DVD - behind the rumoured assembly of Blu-ray equipped 360s by Pegatron

frankly, i'm already tempted to give Chrome a try. i recently updated to FF3

/me too. I hate that "Awesome bar", and so do lots of other people. Also, it just runs worse, and they've messed around with little things that worked fine before.
Google - get AdBlock, Flashblock, and NoScript working (or write a framework that allows people to write them for Chrome), and I'm yours.

I thought the same thing when I saw the ".ro". Ram is so goddamn fast anymore I can't believe there's any benefit at all to "defragging" it.

W3C

Memory use is everything. I find it hard to believe there is no inherit speed issue with linear virtual address space mapping to real memory all over the place.

but how many commonly used applications truly need several gigabytes of ram in order to function properly?

Photoshop, Premier, 3DSMax (it now often runs out of address space on a 32 bit machine), Maya, ZBrush, XSI, anything art related pretty much. I'm sure a virtual machine would eat address space too. My wife just telling me last night about an application at how work that get to 1.4 Gig and crashes, and that's some kind of (crappy) database app (sounds like it's badly leaking).

I'd imagine that the manufacturing in all cases is done by Wun Hung Lo Light Industry and Pre-Used Organs Conglomerate in China. Branding is largely superficial.

As an aside though, the Microsoft Explorer Trackball was a Microsoft custom job that Logitech have never produced a direct competitor for. I mention this because, being Microsoft, they killed it off despite its popularity in its niche. Used examples are now selling for $250 and rising on eBay, and there's even a market for cleaning kits and maintenance marketed specifically at this device; I doubt we'll ever see any particular Logitech branded pointing device being missed as much.

Yes, because thats exactly what I said, lets pack up a piece of Pittsburgh and launch it.

Have you ever seen a Straw Man? Looks like someone paid attention in rhetoric class. To bad you didn't pay attention to any classes actual dealing with long term utilization of space.

Your response actually lead me to the conclusion that you don't know much about space, or just don't care to evaluate any plans other then your favored one. There is a growing opinion that advocates that any Mars plans are pointless and that the focus should shift to cheaper space based construction if anything meaningful is to be done.

Would it be cheaper to launch solar powered fuel distillation equipment from Earth to the Moon, then create the fuel for a launch of a probe from the Moon to Mars and still have it functionally producing afterwards for use in other probes, rather then a gigantic one-off rocket to get from the Earth straight to Mars? I think so.

While the Moon lacks abundant iron ore it has plenty of the building blocks of aluminum, titanium and fiberglass(you know those "other" components in space craft). The Moon has more then enough energy crashing into its day side to cheaply smelt small quantities of ore and fiberglass. Iron would be needed only for the complicated rockets that would need to be built on earth with skilled labor anyways. Much of the structural components for large probes would be cheaper to construct with lunar materials out of fiber glass and aluminum rather then pushing through the gravity well.

Focusing on space based construction of components would increase our ability to explore the universe and actually benefit people on Earth. There are a lot of resources in space, and the biggest cost to exploration is the gravity well. Would it be complicated and expensive to produce fuel on the moon? yes, but it would be cheaper then pushing it up to space from earth.

I agree that sending humans to Mars or Alpha-Centauri would be pointless and wasteful, but doing it all with probes from Earth materials and giant rockets would be just as pointless and wasteful.

BTW, your mom told me you were a fag while I was fucking her last night, so any opinion you have is kind of negligible since someone as queer as you obviously doesn't know what they're talking about. I'm just surprised you were able to even type a response with so may dicks in your mouth.

it would be so much cheaper to build the probes needed to colonize it from lunar materials.

Take ten seconds to think about a steel plant. Have you ever seen a steel plant? Now, consider the mass of such a plant. Consider the cost of moving it up the gravity well from earth and then back down onto the moon. Realise that you're talking about several orders of magnitude more mass than /every launch ever made from earth, combined/. Think for a moment about all the other industrial processes required to turn steel into spaceships. (Another clue, spaceships have other ingredients apart from metal.) Oh yeah, and you'll need masses of cheap energy and a couple of thousand people to run the plant, plus concomitant life support, facilities, plumbing, training that takes. Finally, note that there's no iron ore on the moon. Congratulations! you have now achieved a small glimmer of understanding of why why your comment was utter drivel.

I want to catch the next rocket there.

Businesses aren't bankrupt? Just yesterday 2 major UK retailers went tits up. Another couple reported losses of tens of millions one year after having record profits.

The stock market recovering?

http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI

but please check the one year view, not the three days one. To say that the stock markets are recovering when the correct interpretation is that they are nervous, jumping all around the place in a downwards trend, is pie in the sky...

Mods, please bury this post by modding over-rated; I'm having browser problems. Google might help me

P.S. Less than a third of my posts mentioned Bush on slashdot

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mrraven+site%3Aslashdot.org&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

considering that "our" President engaged in gross violations of FISA and the 4th amendment by mass illegal spying on Americans, and engaged in a war of aggression against Iraq who did nothing to us leading to a million dead in fact I was too kind to him. I sincerely hope he is tried at the Hague and found guilty of crimes against humanity and then hung from the neck until dead. That is the right amount of attention and just punishment for those who torture, abrogate the Constitution, and cause a million innocent people to die.

p.s. Thanks for directly liking to a malware executable download, nice:

http://www.google.com/search?q=impulsedriven+malware&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Your problem is that you have no morals. You can't comprehend that she's done anything wrong in the first place.

Being ignorant of the law is not an excuse for breaking it.

Your attitude of throwing the book at the most vulnerable 5th of the population

I never said she should go to jail. However there is too much pity for this women with no one looking at the whole picture.

You are definitely getting marked as a "foe" for it is people like you who advocate kicking people when they are down that make the world an endless cruel shit hole

There's no need to act all butt hurt because you know you're wrong.

To be honest I am glad, hopefully I'll never have to hear from you again, seeming as all your posts are nonsensical dribble about oil and bush.

Maybe I'm being thick, but who are LinkLn? I can't find them anywhere on Google, unless you mean the *nix command?

Indeed. Mmm, redhead hippie girls ;-D Here, have a Charlie Dimmock!

Seems to work for me.

The query asks for articles containing the word 'database' that appeared in comp.* between 1981 and 1999.
Only got about a thousand hits though (most from comp.database.* groups), I have to admit I had expected more.

It's fairly up-to-date:Patterson and Hennessy Computer Organization and Design.

It starts of really simply explaining the absolute basics, gradually going into technical details. Plenty of historical context, examples, lucid diagrams and a companion CD.

Also cures insomnia.

I'm sorry, I must have missed that 'fact'.

Care to provide the evidence? What I have says differently.

The earliest tetrapods commonly had from four to eight digits on their fore-limbs and hind-limbs.

The last time I looked, octadactyl limbs were known, heptadactyls and (of course) the stereotypical pentadactyl ; I'm not sure whether hexadactyl limbs are or are not known from the fossil record, but I'm sure that tetradactyls are not reported except as reduced pentadactyls.

This corresponded to the ancestral lobe structure of their immediate fishy predecessors.

Hmmm, that's a VERY broad brush. I'd recommend Jenny Clack's "Gaining Ground" for a medium-weight introduction. (I'll admit - despite JC's relatively engaging style, I've not finished reading my copy.) There's also a commemorative volume coming out of the Geological Society's Publishing House for Pete Forey's work on the fishy end of the tetrapod continuum, which might be clearer. http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/publications/bookshop/page3213.html

Come to think of it, Forey's coelacanth book is pretty good too, when it comes to the different structures of fish limbs.

RIP http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?sa=t&ct=uk/0-0&fp=491182f120c62f7f&ei=XuERScjTB4LAwgGmqZTzBA&url=http%3A//www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml&cid=0&usg=AFQjCNHcr8G0ar1Zy3zr0YIYCdj0c4I2iw

However, if you propose to any USian that they should have no more right to sue their doctor than a Canadian has to sue their government, or a Brit has to sue the NHS, etc., you are just not going to get very far, dude.

You can sue the NHS as the link show, it happens regularly. However, the culture in the UK, is less litigation happy than that in the US (although unfortunately we're moving in your direction).

Google "jot or breastle"

is there something for it that works like AD.

Samba can operate as an AD domain controller.

Linux can be configured to be an AD client.

is there something for it that works like AD.

Samba can operate as an AD domain controller.

Linux can be configured to be an AD client.

And depending on how striclty you construe it, the UK could be a fascist state already.

Oh, fuck off. I have friends and family who grew up under genuinely repressive authoritarian regimes. (Russia, Poland, E Germany, Yugoslavia/Serbia.) Sorry for the abuse by that's just not just stupid, it's offensive too.

define:fascism

Occasionally, people who work in advertising or marketing actually realise the horror of what they're doing to the world. Then they put it into a funny advert instead of killing themselves. As you'll see here.

I did my own comparisons, and really, I see the Mac tax.

I have a HP Pavilion DV6000, comes with pretty much everything. I bought it a few months ago for £400 (GBP). A Mac Mini costs £399 (GBP).

This laptop has dedicated RAM for graphic card (GeForce 8400M GS - runs all my games just fine, with excellent quality) usage, 2GB RAM, sdcard reader, firewire, A/G/B wireless, DVD burner, HDMI, three USB ports, VGA, modem, ethernet, video out, webcam, microphone...

I use this machine as my mobile gaming machine (it works great) and work stuff (software development, office work), home stuff (movie editing etc). The only disadvantage with it, is that it each core has 1.66GHz, while on the Mac Mini has 1.83GHz. That said, I couldn't use the Mac Mini for decent gaming, or for the majority of the stuff I use this laptop for without significant performance costs, lack of hardware options etc.

That's just the Mini, the cheapest laptop from Apple is the MacBook is £719.00 (GBP), which has Intel GMA graphics, no dedicated graphic card RAM, only 1GB RAM.

Sorry, I'm not convinced Apple systems are on par with PCs for their cost.

don't forget the tried and tested CCTV-foiler, bane of Kentish shopping centres and Daily Mail readers everywhere.
Modern technology, eh?

What I still don't understand is if there are 72 million mobile phones in use in the UK, how come the UK population is only 60,776,238 (July 2007 est.)?

I'm not convinced that almost 20% of the population have two mobiles they use at the same time.

Has anyone got a more up to date figure?

Nah.

Most of us have installed at least one Greasemonkey script for XKCD.

Don't forget that a US gallon is smaller than a UK gallon, so their MPG will appear worse, and conversely of course, UK mpg will appear better.

WALL ALLEY, East Cheam, Tuesday - The global financial crisis may require a multi-billion pound injection of public money over coming days. Smaller institutions are now seeking help, such as the First National Bank of East Cheam.

Founded by Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam earlier this month, the bank has put in urgent asset warnings with the Treasury. "Holdings are way down. Our assets are incredibly leveraged. Capital ratio's buggered. Our, er, co-la-ta-rul-ised debt obligations have us tied in knots. In knots! It's a tragedy, it is."

Mr Busybody has urged the Treasury to mount a rescue package immediately for the bank. âoeIf we go under, whoosh! It'd collapse the East Cheam banking sector. All them widows and orphans! You wouldn't believe it, honestly you wouldn't. Interbank lending's collapsed. I can't get any of 'em to cough up an overnight liquidity loan. Spare us five million quid, mate? Just till tomorrow. I'll be good for it. With Treasury backing."

Chancellor Alistair Darling responded to Mr Busybody's pleas with an offer to send Peter Mandelson around to discuss the matter. "Oh, er, that's all right then, we'll be fine, fine. Sorrytotroubleyou I'lljustgonow."

Actually, the dust blows itself. It gets charged up by ultraviolet light during the day and the solar wind at night. Because there's no air to help neutralize the dust particles, they jump around like House of Pain. From the fount of all knowledge:

<SNIP>
See the article for more information and drawings of the phenomenon recorded by Apollo astronauts.

Interesting.... I wonder how high the dust jumps, I note that the illustration has ~60ft walls round the telescope. If the deposition rate was high, I wonder if the Walls/aperture could be charged so as to act as a anti-dust forcefield.

The back of an envelope indicates meteoric dust is a trivial problem, earth gets ~1000 tons of meteors per day, say the moon geta about 1/6 of that 166 tons spread over 37 million Km2 thats about 5g/Km2, say the mirror 100m2 thats about 0.5 mg/day

JFGI?