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Define cylindrical. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/NeXTcube.jpg

Global warming periods have also always resulted in larger arable landmass (that is, land that is neither too cold nor too dry to farm on)

There wasn't much arable land in the prehistory. That might have something to do with the fact that there was no agriculture (and no humans). A source on that would be nice, since the question of "what portions of land would have been suitable on agriculture if we time-jumped into the Jurassic" is really neat, only I don't recall any monograph having been published on that.

Considering that the most green and bio-diverse period in earths history was when CO2 levels were at 3,500 PPM basically everywhere (as opposed to the current 400 peak PPM in limited areas) and the climate was far warmer

Are you sure about that? First, if I'm not horribly mistaken, the last period where CO2 levels were over 3000 PPM was in the Paleozoic, and Paleozoic hardly seems to be the most biodiverse period in the prehistory

Honestly, how do we end up with these jokers?

Gerrymandering

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Oregon_Average_Annual_Precipitation_(1961-1990)_Map.pngAnother citation

Clearly OP is from western oregon, where it is very rainy indeed.

Windows 7 is stable, IE 10 is a modern browser and has 90% of Firefox's HTML 5 features...

[emphasis added]
Really? This Frankenstein bastardization of a web browser? This thing? You've got to be kidding.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/IE10_ModernUI.png

All interfaces between computers and people are just inconsequential incremental improvements on a single key input device.

Well, yeah. And all computers are just incremental amounts of switches chained together.

I don't mean dictation. one. word. at. a. time. like. this.

NaturallySpeaking. Look at the time—1997 already.

The computer understands all this, and simply e-mails my mom the word "shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit." And my mom of course, understands exactly what is meant

Compression?

since some dickhead went and shot a bunch of people with a weapon

Sorry; the school was the only shooting range open at the time.

It would give you the effect of having a person to interface with the machine for you, isolating you from the machine, just as we are with cars.

Most people don't have chauffeurs.

When was the last time you hand-cranked your engine to start it

Does your computer still look like this?

And you know where that leads...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Microsoft_-_Where_do_you_want_to_go_today.svg

As best I can tell, the footage is from the forward-facing camera, whose view is slightly obscured by the nose-antenna-harpoon-thing(technical term) visible on the front of the drone in this shot.

That would presumably also be present in competent fake footage; but it is consistent with the line of sight that you'd infer from the drone's layout, and from the shots on the manufacturer's puff page.

How many Rhode Islands is that?

It depends on how big they are, but offhand, I'd say a lot.

The .6 mSV is for a fast trip there and back. It does not cover any time on there. Nearly all of the round trips have spoken of 1-2 years on the surface. Of course, you will get nearly the same amount as in space unless you are underground.
As such, you will get at least 1.5 Svs, and more likely 2-3 Sv.

Here's a cached version

according to Wikimedia. I agree with the trend sentiment, but they still have a majority.

It was probably before your time. I was quite good at it in my day.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Baseball_NES_box_art.jpg

ORLY?

No, ANLY...

A couple of cameras can watch Acres of trains. (zoom in, there are antennas on top of those lamp poles.

One tiny problem: They can't actually see 95% of the trains being sprayed, because they are hidden by other trains.

For hypocrites...the truth always hurts. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Ingrid_Newkirk_by_David_Shankbone.jpg/250px-Ingrid_Newkirk_by_David_Shankbone.jpg Note sure which is worse now, PETA or The Church of Scientology...

Cable? No WIFI in your world?

A couple of cameras can watch Acres of trains. (zoom in, there are antennas on top of those lamp poles.

Start adding up $200 cameras until you get to the price of a single drone. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Large cars is a part of American culture. When I came to US in the 90's it was the end of an era these abominations. Since then an average car has gotten smaller, but not by much. It is a culture where everybody tries to conform, because when everybody drives a semi-truck getting accidentally squished between two of them in a small tin can can be painful. The gas price hike in recent years made small cars more appealing, and completely killed the Hummers

And you don't say you have a king.

Perhaps they don't look at stamps or coins very much.

Sure looks like it to me....

You are correct.

In LA in the late 80s. I thought aliens were invading.

You know, had you actually watched Star Trek VI and the new episodes of Star Wars by the time you saw that, you would have known that an alien explosion would have made a 2D shockwave and not a spherical one. If nothing else, we can at least thank Lucas for fixing this bit of general education.

I learn something new today. Thanks !

BTW, looking at the picture ( @ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Curiosity_wheel_pattern_morse_code.png ) I am totally surprised at the sheer thinness of Curiosity's wheel !

How can they expect Curiosity to last long with such thin wheel ??

This article talks about how in England there has been a huge increase in the number of measles cases since Wakefield published his claptrap about vaccines causing autism and other nonsense.

For those not bothering to read the article, this is part which you need to know:

This year, the U.K. has had more than 1,200 cases of measles, after a record number of nearly 2,000 cases last year. The country once recorded only several dozen cases every year. It now ranks second in Europe, behind only Romania.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Measles_incidence_England%26Wales_1940-2007.png

Here is the graph om measles incidents in England and Wales, . As you can see even the 2,000 cases from the last year are still less than the measles cases from 1998, when everybody was vaccinated and the fraudulent study was published.

I'd like to see the stats for the last 5 years too, but for me it is quite clear that this "outbrake" is more PR scare than real epidemic.

and never ever have a receptacle in the floor, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

i was at a client the other day and the floor receptacle had a little spring in one of the socket holes,

You're supposed to cover floor outlets when there isn't something plugged into them, for exactly that reason.

All the floor outlets I know of come with integrated covers of some type. Example

So, they were they to sightsee one of the largest American "chemical processing structures" . . . after midnight . . because it improves the view? You can see easier in the dark? And they had to trespass to do it.

A reservoir is in essence nothing more than a big tank of water. By your criteria, a water glass is a "man made chemical(water) processing structure." No "processing" takes place in a reservoir, it just hold massive quantities of water, that's it. Actual water treatment that involves chemicals takes place in actual water treatment plants.

On the other hand, a reservoir is a place where one might introduce poisons that could be selected with a knowledge of . . . wait for it . . . chemical engineering to make it through treatment unaffected and into the "man made chemical(water) processing structure" (AKA drinking glass) on your table that you sip from time to time.

Well, whatever was going on, I'm sure someone will get it figured out eventually. It obviously won't be you though. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not.

Not every terrorist has attacking as their mission. NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE & CITIGROUP HEADQUARTERS
Mirror: FBI hunting 12-strong sleeper cell linked to Boston Marathon bombing Hmmm, Boston? Isn't that close to some recent news item?

One last thing - I find the level of intellectual dishonesty in your post absolutely stunning.

Having in mind that a mop of hair can induce static charge makes it more understandable that we attribute exceptional intelligence to scientist with hair in mess (i.e. Albert Einstein) :-) Let's grow long hair and make them electrically charged! :-)

It depends greatly on what you define as "a computer." In the single-core, single-cpu days (which never really existed, due to the complicated supporting hardware that gets overlooked), the fear was that Moore's Observation (not a law, learn the difference) would run into a hard cap when circuitry sizes were small enough that quantum unpredictability would become a significant factor.

The reality that happened (long before that expected challenge) is that computing emphasis changed from 'doing one thing really fast' to 'doing 2 things fast', then 4 things, then 8 things, etc. So the transistor count has been outperforming the observation, but nothing dramatic yet.

And the teal deer/conclusion:
It's a lot easier to get a headline and some ad views by saying that something is impossible than admitting it will probably happen, but might be behind schedule.

I think they have a range of 300 meters and require a constant connection of the "power cord".

As an engineer, this is precisely why I have always questioned the global warming hysteria. Nature *abhors* positive feedback cycles. In any system that has been stable over long periods of time, negative feedback dominates.

Positive feedback is critical to the disastrous global warming projections. Specifically, higher CO2 leads to slightly higher temperatures, leads to more water evaporation - and OMG water vapor is a greenhouse gas. If this positive feedback cycle actually worked, it would have been triggered by the massively higher CO2 levels of the distant past.

No one doubts that the earth is warmer now than it was in the 18th century. What warmists avoid is the long-term historical evidence, by which standard today's CO2 and temperature changes are totally irrelevant blips.

I would actually like to know what metrics you're using for this.

I've taken a look at http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm, and it seems that, while it's not a perfect metric, Ubuntu is the only Linux OS (except android) which is actually creating more hits per month since this time last year.

Sure, this is not perfect, but considering that Fedora, Arch, and SUSe are all down and Ubuntu is up, it looks like Ubuntu is getting stronger.

Aluminum is usually the go-to material for broadband reflectance in the visible spectrum. It's about 93% reflective when freshly applied (it corrodes on contact with oxygen to form a thin layer of transparent aluminum oxide which helps protects it from further corrosion but degrades reflectivity - better to coat it with something else). You can improve it a bit with coatings, but those are highly directional. Silver is a bit better for most of the visible spectrum, but falls off quickly towards the blue/ultraviolet end which is where many powerful chemical lasers emit (dunno what this system uses). Chrome is actually pretty bad, usually around 60%-80%. Other tricks like dielectric mirrors are highly sensitive to wavelength and incident angle, while total internal reflection prisms (common in binoculars) only work for a narrow range of angles.

So best-case aluminum will still absorb 7% of the laser energy, meaning worst-case the laser needs 14x more time to heat up a target vs. a black one (ignoring cooling). Of course if the range of this laser is only 2 km, that may make a huge difference.

Not all anchors work by weight alone. The classic anchor, for example, is two back to back J hooks with flukes on the ends. It is designed to dig into the sea bed.

Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.

Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt.

China's exports by country - US buys 20% from China.
Also China runs an year-on-year positive trade balance

US goods trade: total showing a deficit since at least 1989.
Goods trade with China only - deficit again

Gotta ask yourself the population of which country would suffer the most if the trade between the two would suddenly stop?

[sarcasm]Yes, like forcing the United States into a real finical crisis is a good idea for China Self interest.[/sarcasm]

China buys US Dollars to keep their own economy stable. Also the United States is their biggest buyer. Put all Americans in the poor house, you have lost your own economy.

The biggest buyer buys only 20% of their exports. Significant, but not quite economy busting.

Have you ever used a QRCode? Ever noticed that most algorithms don't recognise the QRCode when it's sharpest and level with your screen? Usually, you don't have the time to have the code be level, or in focus, before the algorithm picks it up.

That's because QRCode are nigh indestructible. They could add a watermark and the code would most probably still be readable (depending on the level of error correction you apply when encoding).

For example, I took one of the Wikimedia QRCode examples, and drew on it. It still worked. Then I skewed the image using MS Paint. It still worked. Then I decided to go from 172 pixels to 86 pixels (using MS Paint's resize function). It still worked (zoomed to either 100% or 200%). Then I decided to "reduce its resolution", so to speak, by resizing that reduced image to 200%, then back to 50%, then back to 200%, etc for 4 or 5 times, until I ended up with this. It still worked.

Now, I'm sure that I *wanted* this to work. There will be dozens of cases where even the most stupid tear of paper or poor lighting will prevent that QRCode from being decoded. But somehow, I don't think that YouTube's HD video encoding will be much of an issue for QRCodes.

Tested with QR Droid on a Wiko Cink King, scanning off a 23" 1080p screen.

You mean this rocket right here?

No, I mean the ones the anti-semitic organization Hamas, who the Palestinians elected to run their government, continually fire at innocent Jewish families. The ones you never have to live through. The ones you so easily make light of and excuse. The fact that Israel has better technology doesn't make the people firing those rockets any less evil.

More problems for tired Zionist apologia: Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war was the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran

I haven't apologized for anything. I merely point out facts that both sides, mostly anti-semitics, like to ignore.

But that means that Palestinian attacks in response to the total blockade of Gaza are perfectly justified by Israeli rules.

Sure kid. And its perfectly justified if Manson gets out and murders some more because we were evil enough to put him in prison. You're a typical anti-semite refusing to acknowledge that you would yourself would never live with the shennanigans the Palestinians are pulling and would probably respond in the same way.

The Palestinians are entitled to all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but they've been willing to make concessions on that in order to get a state of their own.

Of course they do. As soon as Jordan gave up their own claim to the land it should go to some randomly chosen 3rd party that promises to kick out and/or murder some portion of the population. And the Jews that have been living there for the last 2000 years, or those that came at the invite of the Ottoman Emperor be damned, right? Just like the ones that were murdered or expelled from Gaza in 1929.

But Israel keeps making more and more draconian demands, or pulls out of negotiations.

They both have at various points.

Because Israel isn't interested in peace.

I'm sorry, who isn't interested in peace? Have you even read the Hamas charter?

It's interested in land, and waiting out the clock until it becomes a matter of taking land from someone's great-great grandchild to give to someone else's great-great grandchild.

Probably. But until the rockets stop, I don't give a fuck. You don't target children. Ever.

Actually their most commonly cited reason for "murdering the Palestinians" is something along the lines of "INCOMING ROCKET!"

You mean this rocket right here? And the excuse for Israel violating ceasefires and killing hundreds of Palestinians a la Cast Lead?

More problems for tired Zionist apologia: Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war was the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran, one of many trade routes to Israel. But that means that Palestinian attacks in response to the total blockade of Gaza are perfectly justified by Israeli rules.

The Palestinians have been rejecting a two-state solution for more than 80 years.

Repeating a big lie doesn't make it true, it just makes you a bigger liar. The Palestinians are entitled to all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but they've been willing to make concessions on that in order to get a state of their own. But Israel keeps making more and more draconian demands, or pulls out of negotiations.

Because Israel isn't interested in peace. It's interested in land, and waiting out the clock until it becomes a matter of taking land from someone's great-great grandchild to give to someone else's great-great grandchild.

Frankly, I agree with Sir Gerald Kaufman of the UK in his views that Israel is no better than certain German Fascists in their treatment of the Palestinians.

A more apt comparison would be with Apartheid South Africa. And since Israel doesn't want a viable Palestinian state, what will happen is exactly what happened with South Africa and their little Apartheid. I don't believe Israeli extremists would try the madness of "Final Solution", though when you ask them, they actually talk about it!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/West_Bank_%26_Gaza_Map_2007_(Settlements).png

That's NOT a state! And annexation of land hasn't happened and will not happen without agreement of the population.

I believe the extremists in Israel are no different then extremists in Hamas. And when Sharon "saw the light" and tried a real, lasting solution, the extremists killed him.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/Forbidden_Planet_Id_Monster1.JPG

Sort of like the flag where Theo lives.

The project is coordinated from de Raadt's home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In practice people cant tell the difference between 6 bit and 10 bit colour. .

That is unfair.

Rec 2020 not only increases the resolution of the color space, it also increases the area covered in the CIE 1931. In other words, it is not just the same color gamut with less quantization, it is a much larger color space entirely.

Comparison:
Rec 2020 UHDTV: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/CIExy1931_Rec_2020.svg

Rec 709: HDTV: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg

In practice people cant tell the difference between 6 bit and 10 bit colour. .

That is unfair.

Rec 2020 not only increases the resolution of the color space, it also increases the area covered in the CIE 1931. In other words, it is not just the same color gamut with less quantization, it is a much larger color space entirely.

Comparison:
Rec 2020 UHDTV: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/CIExy1931_Rec_2020.svg

Rec 709: HDTV: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/CIExy1931_Rec_709.svg

I wish the parent had linked to a graph of the color spaces in question. For comparison, here's an image depicting the sRGB color space that's currently used, including in HDTV -- and here's one for the CIE 1931 color space used by rec2020/UHDTV.

I wish the parent had linked to a graph of the color spaces in question. For comparison, here's an image depicting the sRGB color space that's currently used, including in HDTV -- and here's one for the CIE 1931 color space used by rec2020/UHDTV.

So that no asshole can propose going to space to evade mankinds extinction as a good alternative .. till at least 1000yrs. have passed.

Within the meantime we should clean up our own mess(those that we built our life and and /.), the only space operations allowed shall be those to get a better understanding of the atmosphere & oceans (OFF EARTH not ALPHA PROXIMA).

Perhaps the workforce we say money can buy is better used on building a CO2 neutral, diseasefree world without the possiblity of nuclear plants running havok ..

Do you know what's similar between Japan and California ?
- devastating earthquakes
- nuclear power near the coast
- and tsunami

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/USA_Nuclear_power_plants_map.gif

more exciting MariaDB news https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/22/wikipedia-adopts-mariadb/

If you have one of these:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/IBM_Port-A-Punch.jpg

I feel like it's 1987

So an organization who asks for donations, waste their money changing Database systems for the sole purpose that they didn't like the company that bought the old one, although they didn't show any signs that they are going to damage the product or make it worse for them in any ways? Sounds like a wast of donated money to me.

So you didn't RTFA???

For our most common query type, 95th percentile times over an 8-hour period dropped from 56ms to 43ms and the average from 15.4ms to 12.7ms. 50th percentile times remained a bit better with the 5.1-facebook build over the sample period, 0.185ms vs. 0.194ms. Many query types were 4-15% faster with MariaDB 5.5.30 under production load, a few were 5% slower, and nothing appeared aberrant beyond those bounds.

Better performance on such a heavy traffic site is neither a waste of time nor money! ;-)

Correct.At the last line on the page, there is a link to the statement: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/22/wikipedia-adopts-mariadb/