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Oh, I get it, "La Palin" is a World Noble.

As a former DOOMaholic, I remember that old school map from DOOM's Episode 1 Map 6 (E1M6) [Central Processing]. :D

What I want to know is why the regulatory bodies of so many countries want to launch their own investigations into this. When has anything been discovered by these investigations that wasn't originally disclosed by Google? It was Google itself that announced to the world that this was going on, although only after Germany asked them about what they recorded. But it seems the only way to safeguard the privacy of the general public is for these government agencies to pick through the data, rather than just deleting it without looking.

Every time I hear of another country investigating Google about this, I am reminded of The Simpsons:

Lionel Hutz: How could you have seen all this, Bart? Weren't you supposed to be in school?
Bart: I sort of skipped school.
Principal Skinner: I knew it! I knew you'd slip up sooner or later, Simpson!
Apu: What slip up? What are you talking about? He confessed it!
Principal Skinner: Quiet, I need this.

Source: Episode 1F19, The Boy Who Knew Too Much

but bad gifts do serve a purpose, it's a free supply of crap you give to people where you have to give a gift but don't want to buy one

The term you're looking for is "mathom". (Kudos to Tolkien for that one!)

The Japanese are way ahead of you.

Digital Archaeology Show Reveals 'Lost' Web Sites

Yeah, they're not hard to find...

I should also point out that Doctor Who doesn't fall under "everyone speaks English" - actually everyone/everything speaks their own language and the Doctor and his companions are able to comprehend them due to an aspect of the TARDIS. Admittedly that's a huge deus ex machina to get around the issue, but at least they made the effort to explain it. I'd also say that, since it's return in 2005, it no longer falls foul of "Everyone looks human", although admittedly a fair few of the alien races are still humanoid. And they dumped all the sex into Torchwood.

I'm about 45 hours into it and found the ended, before I was really done. I will say that there are some serious bugs, questions that won't finish, that force fail for no reason, and companions that get stuck in rocks from time to time. Fortunately, almost all of those can be worked around until a fix is issued. http://fallout.wikia.com/ is a pretty good source.

While everyone can quickly say "Don't support them if they release software with bugs!!!1", it overlooks the issue that 1. These games are incredibly huge and complex. 2. It would mean much longer release cycles and more expensive games, or smaller games. As long as they fix it within a reasonable amount of time. Basically, we become the bug testers, but people have to be a bit reasonable and understand that an open ended game is virtually impossible to completely debug under all circumstances, on all computers. Fallout: New Vegas has less serious bugs than even Fallout 3 does now. (Yes, I still crash about every 4 hours, save early and often) but the game is very, very good, flaws and all. I would rather have the game NOW with bug than in a year with fewer bugs. And no matter how much testing they do, it will STILL have bugs when it is released, as again, there is NO WAY to make it 100% bork-proof. If anything, it gets fixed faster because millions of "testers" are pushing the game in ways that you just can't in the design studio.

No, no. The only reason Oracle would buy the LHC would be so they can attempt to create a Temporal Shift so they can fling themselves to before the creation of the Greek Empire, sue them into oblivion for the creation of the Oracle of Delphi, and stop that shitty objective Pascal from ever being created in the first place!

No, no. The only reason Oracle would buy the LHC would be so they can attempt to create a Temporal Shift so they can fling themselves to before the creation of the Greek Empire, sue them into oblivion for the creation of the Oracle of Delphi, and stop that shitty objective Pascal from ever being created in the first place!

Marines double their rate of fire and increase their movement rate for a limited period of time.

Scientists from Academy report that they have researched Stimpack. The Research lasted 80 time units and required funding of 100 minerals and 100 gas. Scientific community hopes that this discovery will help keep Mutalisks and Zerglings in check.

No idea, but you have just taken the first step to fighting Bonus Eruptus.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Made-up_words#Bonus_Eruptus

Ah no matter Skynet isn't controlled by a central location anyway...

But President John Henry Eden was.

I see you've spent a few hours working the Anti-Mass Spectrometer.

Man..they should just do what I do. Send out an SCV out every once in awhile to gather intel for you. They only cost 50 minerals a pop (no gas).

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Do_NOT_click_any_links!

Or a little less than a typical Kessel Run.

Seems to be

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/widgetbrowser/

Note to install "If you don't have Adobe AIR installed, you’ll need to download and install Adobe AIR."

Then on to ?

http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Bulshytt

Despite the summary, the hologram thing is of little importance. The real interesting thing is the Vocaloid software itself: The actual singing is computer generated. Admittedly, it uses an initial sample bank from a human singer for the seed phonemes (think an incredibly over the top application of autotune), but it's still pretty impressive that what is essentially a computer generated singer has actually had hit singles in the charts.
It's only a matter of time until someone links one of the numerous music-generation algorithms up to Vocaloid, adds a vocal writing algorithm (there are automated scientific paper generators, and 99.9% of lyrics are total nonsensical garbage anyway), and uses some artificial phoneme seed samples (from, say, a fluid dynamic simulation of a model of the human vocal cords), and you'd have songs written and sung pretty much entirely without human intervention.

As an aside, if you're interested in trying this out, and don't want to pay for Vocaloid and one of Crypton's soundbanks (Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin/Len, Megurine Luka, etc), there's a freeware version called Utau, which not only has a large bank of soundfonts for your to download, but allows you to create your own by singing the seed phonemes into a microphone.

http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Bluepill

I'm afraid he can

Fail Safe

I'm not confused between reality and fiction, I just want to know are we talking about Pope Ratzinger or the Space Pope here?

More info at http://turtledove.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Article

Mohandas Gandhi continues to employ techniques of Satyagraha against the occupation forces led by Field Marshal Walter Model. While the techniques may have worked well against the British, the Germans respond with violence. Despite Jawaharlal Nehru's urging that Gandhi to change tactics, Gandhi does not comprehend the horrific violence the Nazis were willing to employ, and refuses. He is finally arrested and summarily executed by Model.

The theme of this story is summed up at the end, as Gandhi realizes that his pacifism worked because the British were at least capable of being ethical, although they didn't always act ethically. The Nazis, on the hand, were by definition unethical, and so had to be met with force.

The doctor already figured this one out! Melissa Majoria was the homeworld of Bees, some of which made their way to Earth. In early 2009, the Bees sensed that a catastrophe was about to befall the Earth, and began to make their way back to Melissa Majoria. Donna Noble noticed this several times, and remarked on it to the Doctor, who also found it odd. (DW: Partners in Crime, Planet of the Ood) The catastrophe was Davros moving the Earth to the Medusa Cascade. The bees' movement created a disturbance on the Tandocca Scale, which allowed the Doctor and Donna to trace their path towards the Earth. (DW: The Stolen Earth) http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Melissa_Majoria

It actually looks a lot more like a Centari Vorchan class warship.

However, you've clearly not worked very hard at this acquired geek-cred though. You misspelled the race's name. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wookiee

But then, I wouldn't even try to guess at spelling their planet's name without looking it up. Lot's of "Y"s. That's all I'm sure of.*

* Cue a bigger nerd to correct me.

Parsec is a measure of time, not currency. Duh.

It's a measure of time to *us*.....but is a currency to them you insensitive clod.

Parsec is a measure of time, not currency. Duh.

'I don't know why but I think I laughed for a few minutes when I read "The production has struggled recently with issues with Unions, and a fire." Is that so wrong?'

The Union should look really check where Brother Ulfang was at the time of the fire. I mean, you just can't trust that guy, they should never have let him join:

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Union_of_Maedhros

Ever try Adipos? It appears to be an easier and more hygienic (if equally unsettling) way to deal with that extra fat.

Trick question, without deviating from the Millenium Falcon's route, it would still be something less 12 parsecs.

Source:

"It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs."
--Han Solo, referring to the Millennium Falcon

Oh no! The probe droid was able to transmit our location to the Empire before it was destroyed! We'll have to evacuate the planet!

I was hoping for a Farnsworth joke :(

No Farnsworth joke, but here's the obligatory Futurama reference.

However, sometimes US trademark lawsuits cross the asinine into the surreal, like with the Sunrider controversy.
Summary - LucasArts created a Star Wars Expanded Universe character called Nomi Sunrider, who featured in a few comics and novels, and was to have appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic game. Jeep sued them for trademark infringement because they make a Sunrider range of soft top vehicles, and obviously their customers can't tell the difference between a fictional character and a vehicle. Thanks to the lawsuit, LucasArts had to discontinue use of the character, and we got Bastila Shan in KOTOR instead.

However, sometimes US trademark lawsuits cross the asinine into the surreal, like with the Sunrider controversy.
Summary - LucasArts created a Star Wars Expanded Universe character called Nomi Sunrider, who featured in a few comics and novels, and was to have appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic game. Jeep sued them for trademark infringement because they make a Sunrider range of soft top vehicles, and obviously their customers can't tell the difference between a fictional character and a vehicle. Thanks to the lawsuit, LucasArts had to discontinue use of the character, and we got Bastila Shan in KOTOR instead.

However, sometimes US trademark lawsuits cross the asinine into the surreal, like with the Sunrider controversy.
Summary - LucasArts created a Star Wars Expanded Universe character called Nomi Sunrider, who featured in a few comics and novels, and was to have appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic game. Jeep sued them for trademark infringement because they make a Sunrider range of soft top vehicles, and obviously their customers can't tell the difference between a fictional character and a vehicle. Thanks to the lawsuit, LucasArts had to discontinue use of the character, and we got Bastila Shan in KOTOR instead.

Change the name of Meego to ANYTHING ELSE

They tried that, but the last two names they chose had trademark problems. Mobilix is too close to Obelix, a character in Asterix comics. Moblin is exactly the name of the Zelda universe's counterpart to Duke Nukem's Pig Cops.

Change the name of Meego to ANYTHING ELSE

They tried that, but the last two names they chose had trademark problems. Mobilix is too close to Obelix, a character in Asterix comics. Moblin is exactly the name of the Zelda universe's counterpart to Duke Nukem's Pig Cops.

Don't they read xkcd or use git? They should start calling the rocks by SHA1 checksums of Earth names prefixed by "Mars: ".

Actually, Charles Schultz thought of this first, more or less.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Tomacco

OTOH, it is moist and delicious.

I postulate that, in spite of the published corporate history, Aperture Science must have started life as Oracle.

In soviet Russia, insulators on electricity distribution poles shoot hunters.

Meshach wrote:

I do not think anyone 40 years ago dreamed that computers would ever be a prevalent in society as they are in the present. Most early computer scientists saw themselves as playing a game not developing the infrastructure that exists now.

Prevalent? The visionaries saw where it could go.
42 years ago, people were thinking about prevalent personal computing like laptops & tablets:

Excerpt from wikipedia about Alan Key's "Dynabook" concept:

This concept was created two years before the founding of Xerox PARC. Kay wanted to make "A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages." The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was originally called "the interim Dynabook". It embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972.

...

The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant.

To say it another way, this was like dreaming up the OLPC in 1968.
*shrug* They had to invent the tech behind today's "prevalent infrastructure" just to make things happen.

Here is Steve Jobs talking about his visit to Xerox Parc - not quite 40 years ago, but close enough:
Excerpt from the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds"

Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc.

Steve Jobs
And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.

It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.

(As an aside, I'm reading Anathem again - Computer Science could really benefit from Lorites.)

Sorry, playing too much Fallout 3 & it just popped in my head.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/You_Gotta_Shoot_'Em_in_the_Head

Reminds me of the Manhacks from Half Life.
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Manhack

Lies, deceit! Wookies come from Kashyyyk. :)

Exactly. Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!

Althouhg

O, HAI!

See also:

• icanhascheezburger
• LOLCats.com
• LOLCats on Know Your Meme
• LOLCODE
• Speak LOLspeak
• Uncyclopedia article on Engrish

• /b/ (NSFW (That means "Not safe for work" (since you appear to have trouble with Internet memes)))

• Wikipediaarticle on "meme"

U has got it nao?
HTH.
KTHXBAI!

We know how this plays out already! Anyone remember NamTar, the genetic experiment that grew from a dumb, small creature into a mad scientist bent on perfecting its DNA?