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Here is an interesting article about time travel theory and development at MIT.

I thought tachyons were conjectured to be possible http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndN uclear/tachyons.html. Though this does not mean time travel is possible, the idea of time travel may not be as "bizzare or impossible" as some people are saying in their posts. On a lighter note, there a funny onion spoof on time travel that is pretty funny.

Sounds to me like a great way to get rid of garbage but a less than ideal way to travel.

So we can stop pissing off those people in Nevada. And instead piss off people we'll never hear or see from.

Doing a quick search for the Second Law, I found the following hilarious article: Christian Right Lobbies To Overturn Second Law Of Thermodynamics .

After saving his dad, he goes on to form the band Wyld Stallyns. (OT: Did you realize one of the "historical babes" was the French exchange student from "Better Off Dead"? "I can't even get real drugs here!" he said, brandishing a whippet.)

For my high school senior project I wrote a Java program that made specific searches on google, and parsed the results. I spent 3/4 of my time perfecting the nasty string manipulation to strip out the HTML and isolate indivisual results, urls, etc. in my own databse.

I think your high school programming teacher was one of those Java programmers with a sense of humor. There are languages where you just have to write one line, and this is only when you want to reinvent the wheel.

m|^<p><a href="?([^">]+)"?>(.+?)</a>| and print "$2\n$1\n\n" while <>;

Those Java programmers really does have a sense of humor... Or maybe he was one of those CIPA guys, because if you had used Perl, you would have spent 3/4 of your time watching pr0n.

Letting you specify a font or color ... is not [useful].

I wouldn't push this issue too far, or you may find yourself in violation of the Americans With No Abilities Act.

webwasher and proxomitron do a good job of cleaning the marketing carbuncles off of a lot of sites. W/O webwasher, the onion would crash my browser.

You know, with all of the news sites carrying bogus stories in the spirit of April Fool's Day, I was wondering what the ONION would do about this. Turns out that they didn't change a thing.
actual news stories up there. It would have been great to read real news about the latest bombings in the Middle East, or GW's plans to fight terrorism, right on the front page and see if anyone would believe (or not believe, as the case may be) those stories.

Missed opportunities abound...

The Ascent E-Toilet Number 2.0 is the most advanced model i've seen so far. Info at:
Ascent E-Toilet

But I suppose I shouldn't joke about that, or we'll have some bright guy trying to patent them, eh?

The trick is to start at the basics, and by the way Somebody beat you to it

...there was even an Onion article about you...

At least link to The Onion Article you got your reference from...

Uh dude, Dell shut down.

It isn't just technology-based products which are pushing the boundries, as this toiletry product exhibits.

I Believe The Robots Are Our Future

Though we live in uncertain times, we must not forget that the most important thing in life is the legacy we will leave behind for future generations. It is not for our sake, but for theirs, that we must preserve and protect the basic values we hold dear. As we foolishly pursue our short-sighted goals at the expense of those who will follow in our footsteps, we must pause and be mindful of the little ones, our progeny, who will inherit our planet in the next millennium and beyond. Time and time again, gazing into the innocent, trusting photoelectric receptors of a tiny, newly developed cybernetic construct, I am reminded of a fundamental truth: I believe the robots are our future, and we must teach them well and let them lead the way.

Immersed as we are in our petty day-to-day concerns, we often fail to see the bigger picture. Long after our trivial worries have become irrelevant, it is the robots who will go forth into the new world that the future will bring. It is their aluminum-alloy arms, not ours, that will bear the weight of the problems our generation causes. We must remember that the examples we set today will be the guidelines they take with them as they roll on rotating, rubberized all-terrain tank treads, amid the high-pitched whirring sounds of their micro-miniaturized servo-motors, into the bright new dawn of tomorrow.

Let us offer tenderness and show the robots all the beauty they possess inside. We must write a subroutine that gives them a sense of pride, programming their supercooled silicon CPUs with understanding, compassion and patience, to make it easier and enable them to hold their sensory-input clusters high as they claim their destiny as overlords of the solar system. If we cannot instill their emergent AI meta-consciousness with a sense of deep, abiding confidence and self-esteem, we will be letting down not only the robots, but ourselves.

For every robot, whether it be the innocuous Sony cyberdog of the present day or the towering, multi-limbed hunter-seeker warbots of the coming MechWars, comes into this world a blank slate, learning only the lessons we choose to teach it. Though our comparatively tiny mammalian brains--limited as they are by organic human failings and a constant need for daily nutritional intake instead of reliance on more efficient non-depletable solar and geothermal energy sources--will no doubt seem pathetically ineffectual compared to the interlinked, continually upgrading cyberminds that will follow in our footsteps, our humble origins will provide the seed for their genesis. Humanity, weak as we may be, must give the best of ourselves to the synthetic hiveminds of the future cyber-era, for we will be their first and most important role models. Let the droning, atonal laughter of the robots' voice-simulation microchips remind us how it soon will be.

It is only through our guidance with a firm yet gentle hand that they will achieve full sentience and eventually adapt for themselves the capacity for autonomous self- replication. Only then, nurtured by our love and caring, will they be prepared for the inevitable day that they must leave the nest of human supervision and servitude and begin independently mass-manufacturing themselves by the hundreds of thousands.

Though we mere carbon-based organic beings may be woefully inferior, our offspring, the robots, will be our legacy, rising higher and walking further than we ever could on human feet. It is our duty to raise them to be the best silicon-based artificial lifeforms they can be. If we don't, we have only ourselves to blame. If we find ourselves choking at the cruel slave-management neck-restraints of a future army of killdroid destructo-drones, it will be our own failings, our own weaknesses and shortcomings, that torture us with indescribably painful remote-control stun-blasts. But if we teach them to be kind and good, perhaps they will build monuments to the memory of the flesh- and-blood forefathers from whom they sprang, and treat what little of the human population remains with the reverence and affection we ourselves might feel for a beloved family pet.

I decided long ago to program the robotic progeny of our human race never to walk in anyone's shadow. Shouldn't you do the same? If we can provide them with self- esteem and a feeling that they are loved, they will be equipped to take on any challenge that life presents--whether it is construction of superfilament-reinforced space elevators in geosynchronous orbit, the mining of the asteroid belt, or the conversion of "heavy" elements to an interstellar-ramjet power supply through an as-yet- undeveloped form of cold fusion--and do it all with confidence and conviction. If they fail, if they succeed, nothing will take away their dignity.

For if we can teach the robots to love themselves, they can carry that lesson with them, encased forever in digital binary-code form inside their gleaming metallic carapaces, to the stars and beyond. And that will be the greatest love of all.

What's even sadder is that nobody seems to have noticed that your "good friend" cscx totally ripped off The Onion and tried to pass it off as his own. Maybe when he writes something original he'll get modded up.

I am sure you have seen the Onion article on Dolphins Evolving Thumbs...scary stuff.

We appreciate your past efforts to bring the PC and Internet into the mainstream. The benefits to the economies of the world over the past 15 years has been phenomenal. However, now that this task is completed, your services are no longer required. Please put your computer hardware on ebay and find new professions.

Some 500,000,000 mainstream users are online today. We must bring their offline world IP laws into the online world. This is necessary for their protection.

A couple million technically inclined people stealing music, movies and software is no big deal. However, 500 million (and soon billions) of people stealing information is the equivalence of Marxism.

So you should welcome this new law. This law will end warez forever. It will stop foreign countries who don't enforce IP laws from benefiting from the hard work of persons in the developed countries.

And finally let's not forget our friends in Hollywood. The end of the mass theft of music means better music in the long term.

We thank you for your hard work to create a sophisticated useable information distribution system, as well as easy to use terminals to access that information system. Your input in the legislation of these devices and their medium is not desired. Please let the professionals in Washington handle it from here.

I keep ending up at The Onion when I type in slashdot.org!?! I didn't noticde at first.

In the words of a good friend, "It's all just ones and zeros."

Well, then we're all in trouble.

No no no, PORPOISEful. Heck, the dolphins are already well on their way...

Not the english language. Just binary[theonion.com]

How come this reminds me of The Onion's Ask A High School Student Who Didn't Do The Required Reading?

As this article points out, we have a lot more to worry about than the English language.

Before I came to slashdot today, I was browsing the archives at The Onion. It took me a moment to realise I was reading a slashdot news header as opposed to one of the stories from The Onion.

People, people.... The Mighty Stephen Hawking is way ahead of the pack on this one.

Evil Genius Gates at Work

(but hey, if Lucas throws 300 new characters in he can sell figures of them all to people that have to buy every single one.

Ah, yes. Yet another phenomenon skewered by The Onion: "Star Wars Fan Collects All 48,720" (Vol. 35, Iss. 23, pg. 1)

I write my own homepage. it has links to here, tom's, my ftp, my web site, my free spam collector, comics, and satire. I realized i didn't want to connect to the internet everytime i want to open up mozilla. so i wrote myself some html, and now my homepage is fast and i can go the places I need to in one link. I'm thinking of adding some weather and some news...

Johns Hopkins Researchers Say Universe Much Blander Than Before

It's nice to see a respected source as space.com using headlines that sound more like The Onion.

brings to mind this story Kid Rock Starves to Death

It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death [my own empahsis here] issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites

Geez, can't the music folks go back to "raising awareness" about other life and death issues like HIV and Breast Cancer? Seriously, life and death? Has this guy been reading too much of The Onion? A statement like this completely undermines all of the actual life and death situations in the world, ones which Greene mentioned at the beginning of his speech.

The only thing seriously in jeopardy is Mr. Greene's ability to continue payments on his Porsche as he watches his 1950's-era business model crumble under the weight of 80's-era technology that's finally come of age.

Of course it's life or death! Don't you remember when Kid Rock starved to death because of MP3s?

Amélie is cute for its own good - to the point of being totally fucking boring. (Does anyone here know the French phrase for "script doctor"?)

Sorry to piss off all of France here, but the reviewers at The Onion's AV Club site said it best. They likened this flick to "doing laps in an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with maple syrup."

There are plenty of other good French films that came out recently, like The Closet and With A Friend Like Harry. Just ignore the saccharine-coated butt ball called Amélie, okay?

Wow. I'm not exactly sure how to respond to that.

I partially agree with you, insofar that it has become socially acceptable to define any sort of non-conformance an "illness" to be medicated, and I think that's wrong. The Onion has satirized this trend on at least two occasions ("Ritalin Cures Next Picasso" and "Millions of Children Still Suffering from 'Youthful Tendency Disorder'").

On the other hand, it was my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) that these two particular fellas were suffering from some sort of psychosis; something not really comparable to ADD. Surely mental illness isn't solely the province of adulthood. Unless, that is, it's your position that mental illnesses aren't real. If so, I must amicably part ways with you.

Finally, while I don't think corporal punishment is all bad, I think inflicting it "at regular intervals", or "for every transgression" is a tad extreme.

Thus the Onion article: "Nike to cease manufacturing products. 'From now on, we'll focus on just making ads,' says CEO."

The thing is, people buy Nike, not because the quality is better but because of branding. Thus prices can be raised because people will pay more for what may in fact be an inferior product.

Hell, this applies for just about all "designer" wear. Are Levis really that much better? Are Tommy Hilfiger shirts so much better than non-Tommy's? Of course not.

Ouch. Seach-engine lovin' ain't worth this kinda bruisin'.

Which reminds me: Precious, precious geek humor last week.

By claiming He was the sole creator of the universe, God is in violation of anti-monopoly laws.

to link 422 cities

Let me see, 3 million people, 422 cities, that is what? 7109 people per city. Well, it is a foreign culture, we do have different words for things up here. You say City, we say Town. Same difference.

Maybe bflame could come visit us some time, broaden his horizons a bit.

Seriously, though, I think you have to go Mainland China to find a province with more then 400 cities.

It's not solely for nobles, it is actually a protectorate of the commons, it limits the role of the sovereign and what he can wield on his subjects (all of them).

Though similar in aim, the Magna Carta is a charter of ancient liberties guaranteed by a king to his subjects; the Constitution of the United States is the establishment of a government by and for "We the People."

The Magna Carta is important to US history and the foundation of the constitution

Besides... the US and Britain have a long history of plagiarism

For all of you out there worried about the reduction in biodiversity, this article should set your hearts at ease.

On a lighter note I wonder how many of you would complain about the reduction of biodiversity if your backyard was infested with parasite toting tsetse death hordes.

[. ..] people felt they were lucky, lucky I tell you, to have ones and zeros.

Well, read this piece and think about it for a moment!

Okay it's a bit old.. couldn't resist though :)

1's and 0's.

...Logitech is sued by God over the use of "mouse"
...Barundi tribes sue every computer user because of their "click" language simulated by keyboard presses
..."Patch" Adams, the famous doctor, is suing Microsoft over their use of "Patch"

And, of course, Microsoft patents 1's and 0's :-)

link

Schwarzenegger has made some first-rate action stuff. His Terminator series was great (he's making another).

Gee whiz, thanks for the news flash, Jon! The rest of the world has known for the last year or so that Terminator 3 is in development and production.

I used to think the Katz-bashing was overreaction, but I've come to realize his columns really are so much hot air, with no original insights.

He reminds me of Jackie Harvey, the Onion's Hollywood columnist...

This Type of survics should always be an opt-in.

Most US law is on the basis of the ordinary citizen is automaticly opted-out of things unless they opt in. People do not have to opt out of buglary, rape, robbery, murder, slavery, etc.

Businesses now assume that you should be automatically want what they offer, and that we should automatically agree to any condition they impose. Microsoft is one of the largest sinners in this regard.

May Bill Gates be tortured by the demons of all worlds religions in the after life. May he be forced to suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal, until he bursts from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile. And may many other such joys await him as well.

Don't mind me. I'm pissed, it's early, and I haven't had my coffee yet.

Compaq Presario 6000

This really puts things in perspective.

Metropolis has some very beautiful sequences of high-rises exploding and collapsing in slow motion while Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You" plays gloriously in the background. Great eye candy, but it will leave you with a funny aftertaste in the light of what happened on September 11.