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Chrysler 300: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Chrysler-300C.jpg

The Fifth Element flying taxi: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/25/Valerian_FifthElement2.jpg/600px-Valerian_FifthElement2.jpg

Separated at birth!?

Chrysler 300: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Chrysler-300C.jpg

The Fifth Element flying taxi: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/25/Valerian_FifthElement2.jpg/600px-Valerian_FifthElement2.jpg

Separated at birth!?

'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.'

That's not fair, she was feeling vulnerable as she had just broken up with her N'Sync wallposter--which she had been romantically involved with for several deep & very meaningful years. Things fell apart after she saw Tropic Thunder and came to the harsh realization that an astonishing percentage of N'Sync is homosexual.

Those soulless bots were simply preying on her emotions as they coldly recited word for word the Wikipedia entry on the band over and over.

Also, everyone evaluates cars as faces, rather than as machines or butts.

Cars *do* have butts, and sometimes you can tell carmakers put some effort in making them look quite curvaceous.

If the results had been real, by now cars would have evolved to have faces painted on them rivaling the toothy grin on the Curtis P-40s of the Flying Tigers.

Shark teeth painted on a war plane are surely acceptable, but in a civilian car you need a measure of... discreetness? So you have headlights, hood and grille as surrogates to play with.

Just weird. Especially the early models, later ones look much more standard.

... is the Triumph Herald Vitesse.

Debian GNU/Linux is the distro for real men. That's what I use for desktops and laptops (lenny/testing with a bit of sid/unstable and custom things) and servers (etch/stable with some custom things) and it works extremely well. Debian-based distros are not the real thing. Debian is the real thing and that's what real admins use. It's a shame that Wikipedia overlooked Debian. Some people may think that other distros have "predistable releases" but that's a myth, because you can always get some new stuff from the testing and unstable branches, which contrary to their name are working very well. When all other distros and all other OSes die, Debian will be alive and totally ready to run all PCs and servers with extreme stability and security. I think that they chose another distro just because they didn't researched Debian's advantages well enough. See also this interesting bit here. We, Debian people, should help them understand why Debian is the best distro out there and why it should run their servers.

It's pretty much all gigabit ethernet internally; our core switch is a Foundry BigIron RX-16 of some variety, with some smaller breakout switches aggregating traffic from each rack.

We're not really doing SAN stuff; app servers grab most of their data from the MySQL databases, and bulk file uploads are pushed up via NFS *shudder*.

From a quick peek at our DB server stats, it looks like even our busiest DB servers are only topping out around 8 megabits/sec, so we don't have a big incentive to go to anything fancier than GigE. (10G between racks might start to make sense at some point, but for now 1G is plenty.)

Our uplinks to the internet are physically some scary fiber for 10G, whose details I leave up to our network manager. :)

Of course most users are going to just click "OK", but how can the more tech-savvy users(you know, the ones who actually read the boxes) actually know what they're approving when the dialog boxes say such laughingly vague shit like "File operation - continue or cancel?"!

Might be difficult working in Areospace to take them... But they would certainly capture the kids attentions, even just the masses of cabling, show them your messiest cabling spot and say all of these wires run out to all directions over the building, where they split into another hundred cables and so on. If you have a picture of your network topology with all the branching trees it might be interesting to flash up. If you have a video camera make a 3 minute video about the life of a cable, follow it through the building, narrate it and say the website you want is moving through these cables, then after you go through the whole process say that all took about "Clap" less time then that took.

If you are explaining any of the hardware, explain it in the first person, if you talk about a router or a firewall personify it, talk as if you are a stressed router trying to sort packets as fast as you can or a gruff firewall acting as a bouncer.

All the fourth graders will have used the internet, at home or at school, try and relate what you do to the internet or a website they use. Talk about how the data zips through from one point to another though the schools network, then to the Internet's network.

But absolutely don't mention the word SAN.

It might not be a hit with 100% of the class, but I'm sure some autistic spectrum boys will find their career path that day. ;)

This picture might not be a bad idea as well.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg
You could probably lie a bit and pick a point to put a "You are here" --> on the map. so you can trace your way fictionally through the internet to whatever the kids are hip with.

I think what you're looking at is the infrared absorption spectrum. I quite agree that the principal frequencies at which carbon dioxide absorbs infrared are quite saturated - to a good approximation, all the infrared at those frequencies is absorbed.

Thing is, though, what happens then? Your molecule absorbs a photon and goes into an energetically excited state. There are two things it may now do. The molecule may collide with others, and the energy be spread as kinetic energy, warming the whole gas slightly. Or alternatively it may drop back to a ground state, emitting a photon at the same characteristic frequency. It's a 50-50 shot whether that photon goes down, back to Earth, keeping the place warm, or up, out to space, cooling the planet.

So, some percentage of the absorbed photons are re-emitted. Half of those which are, are going up. They'll probably be absorbed again by still more carbon dioxide higher up in the atmosphere. You end up with a statistical matter: how long does a typical infrared photon spend being scattered about in the atmosphere, before it ends up either as heat in bulk matter, or escaping into space? That is the problem. Add more carbon dioxide, and your average photon will have its first absorption sooner, trapping heat nearer the ground. And on average it will have more scatterings before any escape, increasing the likelihood of it becoming absorbed entirely into warm air or ground.

I don't know about a Decepticon hooker, but they had a bitch.

If you're going to trot out the Apple // line, you may as well know its history.

For what it's worth, the apple/command key predates not only the dos shell, but MS-DOS itself.

Not true. These were added on the Apple //e, which antedates MS-DOS. Take a look at the Apple ][+ as compared to the Apple //e.

Same with the alt/option key.

The closed-Apple key didn't become Option until the Apple IIgs. (The IIgs unit.) They weren't even on the Apple //e Enhanced. The familiar Macintosh Cmd and Option keys, though debuted with the original model, though there was no control key. But, then, a Mac isn't an Apple //, is it?

And "backspace" is a function on a typewriter.

So is "return" (as opposed to "enter"). Your point was again? Now get off my lawn.

--Joe

(I grew up with these machines, and I remember their sometimes frustrating differences well.)

Well, lets see. if you look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e5/Total_music_market_2003.png where it gives the total music market in 2003, you can see that, although the US is huge, if you combine the EU and Japan, they outweigh it. And in when buying singles, the EU and Japan are ahead of the USA.

Not at all surprising, but who's music are they buying?

Well, lets see. if you look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e5/Total_music_market_2003.png where it gives the total music market in 2003, you can see that, although the US is huge, if you combine the EU and Japan, they outweigh it. And in when buying singles, the EU and Japan are ahead of the USA.

I had heard from LiveScience that someone had been speculating our universe was shaped like a higher dimensional torus. Isn't there a type of hyperdimensional torus with a very small hole that kind of looks like a cushion (the middle one)? Maybe that could cause material to flow to a central point while the torus expands.

Also, if a 3D universe is projected as a surface of a 3D figure, be it sphere, cylinder, torus, or the friendly dodecahedron, would there be any places that could lead to the core?

Ullage is used for stage separation too. The Saturn V had big'uns. The motors didn't separate the stages, they provided a little acceleration to settle the fuel at the back (bottom) of the tank before the stage ignition.

You see them on each stage here.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Saturn_v_schematic.jpg

So is the lack of an ullage motor on the Falcon 1 second stage likely to cause problems?

Ullage is used for stage separation too. The Saturn V had big'uns. The motors didn't separate the stages, they provided a little acceleration to settle the fuel at the back (bottom) of the tank before the stage ignition.

You see them on each stage here.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Saturn_v_schematic.jpg

The US box art for MM2 was not the anime style either, not as 'bad' as MM though:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/be/Megaman2_box.jpg

They missed this one from their screen-shots.

Have you considered Transwikism?

You know, in all the time I've spent at Wikipedia, I've yet to see even one instance of this fabulous mythical beast, the "deletionist", whose identifying characteristic is that he wants things deleted for the sake of deletion

Thats because they are all hiding over here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians

Personally i prefer AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD

You know, in all the time I've spent at Wikipedia, I've yet to see even one instance of this fabulous mythical beast, the "deletionist", whose identifying characteristic is that he wants things deleted for the sake of deletion

Thats because they are all hiding over here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Deletionist_Wikipedians

Personally i prefer AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTD

Then my fortunes changed when I had the chance to buy a used Altos 8086 computer running Microsoft's version of AT&T Version 7 Unix called "Xenix" ( )

What was great about it, is that it had a program called "learn" ( ) which was a tutorial that taught both Unix and C.

It's a shame that "learn" is not included in modern Unix and Linux distros. That would be a valuable resource for students that would otherwise only be exposed to an OS (which will remain nameless here) that was designed for computer illiterates.

This is your chance to make sure the next generation can at least perceive the elegance and thought that went into making an OS and programming language that was designed by and for programmers, instead of by and for businessmen.

Only on slashdot would somebody mention the idea of carrying around a TRS-80 Model 100 as a solution to jotting down electronic notes on the go, much less get modded up for it. I think a PDA or such would be more practical, or just letting the laptop sleep/hibernate for near "instant-on" functionality.

No, this is actually more like a corkboard or message center.

And I've not actually seen it in any other location . . .so in that sense it is kind of innovative

Um, er, well

If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).

Yesterday I tried to rip Rolling Stones' "A Bigger Bang" using exact audio copy in burst mode. It didn't work, the drive kept speeding up and down. :( The disc is copy controlled: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Copy_control_logo.png Easily fixed: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4294404/Rolling_Stones-A_Bigger_Bang/ The other alternative is simply to use a linux ripper, cdparanoia works fine. Sam

The disc is copy controlled: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Copy_control_logo.png"

Give cdrdao a try....I've never come across anything that wouldn't copy.

Is this normal?

Fuck that, I'll stick to the CD, which I can rip myself.

Yesterday I tried to rip Rolling Stones' "A Bigger Bang" using exact audio copy in burst mode. It didn't work, the drive kept speeding up and down. :(

The disc is copy controlled: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Copy_control_logo.png

Any improvements to Debian would propagate down to all of it's decendants. It's much easier than pushing improvements back upstream.

If we dispense with leap seconds then this relationship will slowly change and noon will eventually be dark.

In 200 centuries (if we add 2 seconds per year, and this only happened once afaik). :)

Or if we keep the same rate as now (20s in 30 years), somewhere around 650 centuries from now.

During a life time (less than 100 years) even if we add 2s per years, the time will only be 3 or 4 minutes "earlier".

Anyway i'm not saying UTC is bad. It's great. I don't think everyone here understood how it work. I'll try a short summary (i hope i won't say anything wrong here).

We have a "stable" time. We don't have something with a better precision. This time is given by atomic clocks (mainly caesium) all around the world. Then their time is compared against each other by the BIPM (Bureau International des Poids Mesures) to have more precision/security (clocks are not ticking at the same rate). Ok now we have a "stable" time. This is TAI. What's the use for UTC then ?

Well as you may know, earth doesn't rotate evenly (mainly because of moon, oceans etc.). It can speed up or slow down. If the absolute value of the difference between TAI and UT1 (solar day, related to earth rotation) is greater than 1/2s, then we are closer to the next second than the current one. So we need to remove (this never happened afaik) or add one second to UTC.
The wikipedia entry about leap second has a Nice graph showing how UTC differs from TAI. We can see that time can also "slow" down (especially between 2000 and 2004).

If you're interested in this, I think you should read the page about leap second by David L. Mills (Who added the RFC NTP entry, and created (x)ntpd). Actually you can read the whole documentation, you won't lose your time, trust me.

Now about people complaining about UTC. I don't get what's wrong with UTC ? TAI isn't an answer to UTC or an improvement, it's the foundation so we can build UTC on it.
We can't rely on UT1, we need a really precise time (for GPS, logs, army, research, money transactions, and so on).
We could use TAI of course. But by doing this, we won't help our grand grandchildren. If they wake up at 8:00 am, 5 hours after the day started, well, it will be weird. And they will have something to care about.

The leap second, we don't even feel it. Only atomic clocks do the leap second (afaik, i could be wrong though). ntp clients, only need to correct the drift (leap second can be considered as a instant drift) ie add fractions of seconds slowly so that the computer doesn't even notice (and that you don't have trouble say... In apache log for instance with a page viewed at one time and another page viewed one second earlier or kernel warnings or anything else).

You could use a script like the one Wikimedia Commons has which detects the client's supported players and selects one. It would probably be trivial to add a Flash check in addition to the others and fall back to FLV if necessary. The script will use the <video> element if it can. On my system it uses the Totem browser plugin.

Exactly. Am I supposed to white list every scumbag company that provides an "opt-out" cookie. That just doesn't make sense because the supply of scumbag companies is practically unlimited.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Phorm_cookie_diagram.png
Just look at all the spoofing nonsense. That just adds points of failure.

If you haven't switched away from your phorm infested ISP by now, then be sure to add both *phorm* AND *webwise.net* to your ad blocker.
Remember, friends don't let friends use (AOL|talktalk|virgin.net|BT)

...both had fantastic sound: Grim Fandango and System Shock.

Grim had such a brilliant soundtrack that I tried to buy a copy of it from Lucasarts. They said "the soundtrack promotion is over--that item is no longer available" so I downloaded it. I put it on in the car quite often, and even as standalone music, it's STILL great!

The original System Shock is well known for being a legendarily scary, immersive, atmospheric thriller. One of the things that made it so good was the sound: The sound of monsters around the corners, Shodan insanely taunting you (check out the sound bite on wikipedia), the startlingly friendly 'new email' notice, and then the hilariously banal elevator music as you go between levels.

THAT was sound, my friends.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Tintin_cover_-_Red_Rackham's_Treasure.jpg

Scientists' current model of the structure of a quark here Imagine three of those things!

Last year's Debian Project Leader, Sam Hocevar, is a senior member of the Gay Nigger Association of America. Sam can be found, along with several Pakistani terrorists, on IRC in #gnaa on NiggerNET (SSL on irc.gnaa.us port 6697).

See here:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gnaa-logo.png

Not only does the GNAA seek to destroy Slashdot and Wikipedia (honorable goals), but they are very experienced with using botnets for fun and profit.

NEVAR 4GET: The Aliens come from France!

...as evidenced by this photo of an early Dalek prototype:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j236/Stryc_9/Daleks/Dalek_stairs.jpg

Luckily, the problem was eventually solved with the power of rockets:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Remembranceofthedaleks.jpg

And a bunch of stuff was on fire afterwards. Ever seen an office? Notice how much paper and carpeting and everything else there is in there? Also, you don't have to go very hot to remove the temper out of steel and affect its crystalline structure. Go check out some phase diagrams. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8e/Steel_pd.svg/420px-Steel_pd.svg.png

Exactly that or off a small catapult which they still consider "hand launched"

Fire doesn't melt steel. If you did metallurgy in college, you would know that above a certain temperature the most stable crystalline structure of steel becomes one which is a lot weaker. If you really care, you can google to find phase diagrams of steel like this one that tell you exactly how steel behaves when you heat it up.

If you didn't do metallurgy in college, then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Perhaps that's why Kennedy engineered the popular vote spread to only be 0.1%? Or was he was just trying to save daddy some money by not buying a blowout?

Note that those numbers include immigration. Several of the countries on that list would have declining populations if they banned all immigration. It's also interesting to look at the rate of change of birth rates - in the US and Europe they have been dropping for a little while now. At the moment most of what we regard as the developed world has a birth rate close to the replacement rate or below.

serious business

I swear, Your Honour, she's a 9000 year old space alien with the appearance of a 12 year old human female!

Said it before, and I'll say it again. If all those "18 year olds" that dodgy anime fans mastu... er, get excited over came to life unchanged, they'd look pretty much like this (SFW, unless you'd have a hard time explaining your interest in kids' TV to your boss).

18, my arse. You sick fucks!

Then again, I suspect that rather than feeling shame at this realisation, half the lolita anime nerds would be trying to figure out whether they could book a two-week vacation in LazyTown. :-/

I think you missed my point. The *code* usually does a pretty good job of saying what it is that it is doing, to the extent that comments are for the most part limited to describing what a function does, if you understand the context of the code then the rest is (more or less) obvious.

In perl you really need those play-by-play comments because without them you're pretty much lost. If you don't have them (and most perl code that I have seen uses comments only to document those cases where the original programmer foresaw a problem in later understanding of what the f*ck is going on) then you are sorely out of luck.

Even (shudder) visual basic is inherently more readable than perl.

IBM once had a programming language on their mainframes called 'APL', ('a programming language'), this was similar in that it allowed you to write amazingly dense code, but if you weren't current with the codebase you had no chance whatsoever of understanding what it was doing.

Image lifted from wikipedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/LifeInApl.gif

the game of life. Now if you read that and said (without looking at the title) oh, wow the game of life in one line, how elegant, then more power to you.

If your response was "wtf ??" then you understand how I feel about most perl code :)

j.

FYI: The cargo area is pressurized Heh, was

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/UO_LB_assasination.jpg

The Rainz' murder of the character Lord British who was supposed to be invincible in the game, though it was during a stress test after the server had crashed in which he forgot to set his invincibility flag on the character.