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Of course, anti-matter engines are waaaaaaaay off

Actually, we already have anti-matter engines, they're just not very sophisticated. Pennsylvania State University and NASA are investigating these drives. The drive could power a mission to Mars in 120 days. That's: go to Mars (30 days), stay for 30 days, and come back (30 days). Sum: 120 days. That's awesome.

Ah, here we go:

Antimatter Catalyzed Micro Fission/Fusion

NASA Press release

Antimatter drives

ANTIPROTON-CATALYZED MICROFISSION/FUSION PROPULSION SYSTEMS FOR EXPLORATION OF THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM AND BEYOND

Sure, pure Aluminum might burn, but it's most likely an alloy of some sort.

The range is operated by the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute, which studies Space Physics and Aeronomy among other things.

One of the neatest things about having a rocket range affiliated with the University is that students can design and launch a suborbital rocket in the ASRP.

A UN study : http://www.unep.ch/iucc/fs108.htm
some recent studies about the temperature rise itself :
BY IPCC : (PDF,long article) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
by ipcc : (PDF,Very long, very technical) http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg1TARtechsum.pdf
EPA : http://www.lter.uaf.edu/~davev/nrm304/glbxnews.htm
by NCAR :http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/0107 20093052.htm
There are already some effects : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/01072 6101653.htm
overview of effects by region : http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sr97.htm
We already missed some heating by sheer luck : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/01042 4072410.htm

Of course, most of these documents are just models, but ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE ???

yup! :-)

For some great pictures and a more detailed explanation, try here.

--Shoeboy

ZeroWing

"Polar bear's liver is poisoned becuase of high quantitys of vitamin D, not vitamin A."

From Emazing Science Facts:
"Polar bear livers have such high levels of vitamin A that they are highly toxic to human beings."

From The Alaska Cooperative Extension:
"While most people do not have a ready source of polar bear liver, it is a well known, even notorious source of vitamin A. That is, vitamin A is toxic marginally above required levels and polar bear liver is exceptionally potent."

From Discovery Online:
"Although the extremely high vitamin A content in this fatty diet would be toxic to humans, the polar bear's liver can process it just fine. (When traditional Eskimo hunters killed a polar bear, they would drop its liver through a hole in the ice so nobody would be tempted to eat it.)"

From The Encyclopedia Britannica:
"The polar bear is sought for its trophy value and (especially by Eskimo) for its hide, tendons, fat, and flesh; the liver, however, is inedible and often poisonous because of its high vitamin A content."

Thank you, drive through.

I think Mandrake does a nice job with keeping up to date. Their package manager/update system couldn't be any easier. I've been using Mandrake since 6.0 came out and I haven't been disappointed yet.
If your local mirror is /.d try:
linux0.cs.uaf.edu/pub/mirror/mandrake/7.2/
I've been using 7.2beta for a few months and I haven't had many problems with it. The only hard part is that you should know who really made your monitor although by default it makes a pretty good guess.
Those of you who want to dual boot a Win 9x system shouldn't overlook lnx4win. This will install linux without repartitioning your hard drive.

I'm writing this on Mandrake 7.2beta - its sweet. XFree86 4.0.1, KDE 2, Gnome 1.2
All of it is working now why wait for the end of the month when all the mirrors are hammered. Get it now and update to stable after things quiet down.
linux0.cs.uaf.edu

I know its in Mandrake 7.2beta and it works just fine.
If you can't find it anywhere else try:
linux0.cs.uaf.edu

Many, many people who have posted on the topic of gender inequality in the last few days have brought up the received wisdom that girls get less attention in school. Read this and then think about it some more.

The idea came from outside the industry. You have to remember that the average user doesn't know the limitations of a computer. We in the industry have a good idea. System like Windows and MAc hide all that stuff from the user.

For example, if you were to ask you're average computer user that's not a DBA, programmer, sys admin, etc. the question "can a computer represent all real numbers?" You will probably get and answer of "yes" most of the time. Those of us in the industry know that the answer is no. This problem comes from the method used to hold floating point number on computers. A lot of modern computers use the IEEE floating point notation standard to contain a floating point number in memory. If you look at the example on the page, 17.15 is not really stored as 17.15 (I should note that the example doesn't point this out, but leaves it to the reader to determine by doing that math), the valued stored is 17.1499996185303. This is close enough in most cases, but the problem increase as you go along--especially if you multiply and divide.
Remember, not everybody knows the limitations of computers. I would suspect that all of us might be able to learn at least one thing from the book.