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The digital tampon:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Tampon.JPG

I kid you knot. That's a big mamma for the big girl.

The question is whether it is a good investment, when they can rely on the US and Europe -- at least for non-manned access to space.

We don't have to. We've had that capability for about 35 years now, starting with SLV-3 in the 70s, and going upto ASLV, PSLV and now GSLV (look em all up on Wiki).
India's first satellite, Aryabhata was launched in 1975. Since then, we've made incremental advances in homegrown launch technology (with the aforementioned vehicles) and India's ISRO now also launches satellites for other countries.
Chandrayaan was the first time we sent anything beyond Earth's orbit, and the manned mission follows as the next logical step.

..Orbiter, a graphic novel about the cancellation of manned spaceflight after the disappearance of the last Shuttle mission.

In other words, the tree of life is a banyan tree.

2) Hard to reach buttons. Unfortunately, Knight Rider is the only example that comes to my mind right now, but it's true for far too many movies. Buttons located overhead, out of reach, sometimes requiring the user/pilot to stop doing whatever he is doing right now, move his hands and punch a minuscle button somewhere awkward. Yes, it looks cool, but it's about as sensible as putting the gear stick behind the driver's seat.

You should go into airplane cockpit design:

http://www.aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/multimedia/cvsrf/images/747_cockpit_hi.jpg

I count 6 rows of 26 dials and buttons above the heads of the pilots in just one bank. I'm sure you have a better idea for how to handle it? How about a modern air-liner instead?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/787-flight-deck.jpg

The 787 Dreamliner has certainly moved/removed a LOT of the dials and switches compared to the 747, but there's still an awful lot of dials and switches that require you to move your focus and reach. But again, I'm sure those are completely crappy interface examples.

Burns Cliff is also pretty nifty.

It's not a binding precedent, but it's still a precedent. See persuasive precedent.

Guys are not that attracted by science either: the ideal of manliness is found in a college gym locker room. So I think many guys have this opinion that science isn't a "masculine" thing - at least that's an opinion my male classmates had back in my undergrad psychology days. What we really need is some hot and rugged scientist studs. Is there anyone out there who can be possibly attracted by these guys? Or this crazy dude? I think to encourage boys into science it should be pointed out that you can be a stud and a scientist. And may be, just may be, you won't realistically ever get a Fields Medal while looking like this, but in the REAL world, where looks dominate, it may pay to invest into that penis you saw on the Internet.

So if the mold solution is really very similar to the real rail system, then either Japanese commuters are amazingly "natural" in regards to where they live, where they work, and demographic distribution, or the Japanese railroad engineers missed the human factor when designing the grid. The first possibility is somehow beautiful and creepy at the same time.

That is an interesting question. As a US engineer working with Japanese engineers, I am constantly comparing things they do to how we do, and wondering where general differences are and how they came about.

• Here is a map of the Tokyo rail system: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Greater_Tokyo_rail_network.png
• And here is a map of the London rail system: http://www.tandrag.com/images/uploads/London_Rail_Animation_thumb.JPG

You may notice that the London map is heavily organized around separate lines. The Tokyo map is much more interconnected, like they threw that slime on the ground and planned it out by nature. It may be that the Tokyo engineers were allowed to use a purer approach than the Londoners, less confined by politics. In Seattle, I know that when we talk about where our fledgling light rail system is going to go or not go, it is done piecemail with major battles fought over a single line at one time. I.e. We connect from downtown Seattle to the airport, hitting these neighborhoods. The concept of the route has to be simple enough to be explained in one sentence for it to succeed on a ballot. If some engineers rolled in to town promising some system that maximizes coverage of all points in most efficient way, etc., that goes down in flames. When your bosses are grumpy, cheap, and have a short attention span--then rail networks get built piecemeal without the advantages of overall planning.

If you liked that one, make sure to check out these: the postcard, Eagle Crater, Fram Crater, some cool valley, and Erebus Rim.

If you liked that one, make sure to check out these: the postcard, Eagle Crater, Fram Crater, some cool valley, and Erebus Rim.

If you liked that one, make sure to check out these: the postcard, Eagle Crater, Fram Crater, some cool valley, and Erebus Rim.

If you liked that one, make sure to check out these: the postcard, Eagle Crater, Fram Crater, some cool valley, and Erebus Rim.

If you liked that one, make sure to check out these: the postcard, Eagle Crater, Fram Crater, some cool valley, and Erebus Rim.

The Opportunity is a pretty awesome vehicle. It has outperformed its mission expectations by over 200% - it is in the fifth year of what was supposed to be a 90 sol mission. It takes pretty impressive panoramic pictures as well.

So how would one go about printing out that panorama? I want to frame that and put it on my wall, that's how badass it is.

The Opportunity is a pretty awesome vehicle. It has outperformed its mission expectations by over 200% - it is in the fifth year of what was supposed to be a 90 sol mission. It takes pretty impressive panoramic pictures as well.

I dunno. There's something classic about the NES look. Maybe it's just nostalgia.

Probably.

I was never a big fan of the VGA re-releases Sierra did either, but that's just because I like the parser.

Yeah that's true I didn't like the icon based interface myself. I forgot the remakes switched to it.

But there's something to be said about inspiration coming from limitations. Would Mario look the same if Miyamoto had a full 640x480 to work with?

Technically no, since Mario was given a moustache because they couldn't give him a recognizable mouth.

But the question is does that mean he'd look worse? I doubt it. If Mario-without-moustache is unappealing, then that probably is just nostalgia cus if he'd originally not had one, it'd be Mario-with-facial-hair that would sound weird.

In this case here, I think the original FF1 characters have a lot more, um, character than the rather generic art of the remake.

They're "generic" because it's the same art style that was adopted in FFIV through VI that we're all familiar with, which is really pretty much the same style they were going for in FFI, only with less capability to actually implement it.

I mean you're saying the original characters don't look "generic" compared to the new ones?

Frankly to me the characters look exactly like the original art, just higher res and anti-aliased. Black mage looks like Black Mage, only the FFI version was put through a "make highly pixelated and lose all detail" filter.

Lich looks like what I always wished Lich looked like, rather than a skeleton emerging from some cloud of pink goo? That's I guess is supposed to be robes?

1. Teach the bot the 16 gramatical rules of Esperanto
2. Download the entire group of articles of the Esperanto Wikipedia (123889 articles at this moment).
3. ?????
4. Mi estas Skynet.

Alcohol harmless? I don't think there's any drug that does as much damage as alcohol.

Heroin? Methamphetamine? Cocaine? Mercury-laced cigarettes?

Deep-fried pork rinds?

- T

The point isn't to intentionally commit suicide and hope one "takes out enough of the enemy".

The point is to fight back in a manner that would ensure your survival if you were left alone. No, this might not be as effective as other suicidal options, but it places your death (as inevitable as it might me) in the hands of the state instead of your own.

Perhaps you are too young to remember this.

Just doesn't have the same sound.

Oh, since you bring up the Mac, what ever happened to the closed-apple key?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Apple_iieb.jpg

...if you begin with the right URL.

Actually, a more recent picture of the sedan is here. Looks like the shortened the body a tad from the earlier model. This is of a fully built and working Model S.

Reading for understanding is important.

First of all, your judgement of who or what I am is rather premature since it's based on a whopping couple of comments. It's entirely possible I'm just emotionally invested in the topic and am reacting more strongly than I otherwise would. Perhaps it's not that. Since you don't know, it's pretty silly to comment on the entirety of my personal emotional development based on a couple comments in the same topic.

Secondly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything about the individuals who would choose to play this game, WoW, or any other. I offered criticisms of WoW-like games and then specifically stated that I have no problem with the fact that a lot of people happen to enjoy that sort of thing. I'm sure plenty of people enjoyed playing ET for Atari. I have major problems with that game (along with most others), but if some people loved it, more power to them.

Thirdly, reading for understanding is important. I did not say anything that could reasonably be understood to mean I think all MMOs should conform to my own standards. In fact, I said the exact opposite. And you'd know that if you'd read my post.

I stand by my original argument that the Star Trek universe and franchise deserves better than an MMO where Klingons must beg and plead for an opportunity to open fire. Further, I hope it completely and utterly fails so we have some opportunity for a game that lives up to the Star Trek name. The sad part is that they had the ship combat nearly perfect with Star Trek Bridge Commander. If they'd built up from that, they would have had an amazing base for that aspect of the game. I mean, this is from 2002, and any one of those ships could open fire on any other at any time.

Taking surprise space combat out of Star Trek is like taking the Na'vi out of Avatar.

(AP) SHANGHAI - While the Iranian Cyber Army stymied Baidu engineers early Tuesday morning, a Chinese government official reportedly praised the Iranian Cyber Army and it's successful attempts at further curbing the dangers away from Chinese citizens. After forcing Baidu to remove the ability to find porn or dissidant materials via searches, the Chinese government noted that the Iranian Cyber Army had finally successfully achieved that with absolutely no infractions.

Cai Wu of The Ministry of Culture in China said, "We are impressed with preliminary reports of zero searches returning offensive materials while the Iranian Cyber Army improved the search page." Wu also pointed out that nowhere in the Tao Te Ching is a reference to Baidu made and therefore it is one of the major factors in China losing its sense of nationality and pride. Wu held up an image of Laozi and said, "Does this happy citizen look like he needed Baidu? No. All he needed was his government's ability to protect him from himself." Wu's only criticism of the 'attack' was simply that he expressed lament "it was not a group of loyal Chinese citizens who made children friendly adjustments to the search engine." Wu showed that the static page replacing the search page loaded on average 33% faster and required no user interaction to facilitate.

The Chinese government and the Iranian government have exchanged notes on how to keep their people from finding materials and lies that erode their ability to protect the cultures and citizens of their respective countries. But with the recent cross country attacks, it appears as though a group in Iran has one-upped the Chinese and shown them the beautiful results of hacking in comparison to the oafish and ugly heavy handed government shutdowns. This means, of course, that a stark internet censorship gap exists widely between the US and China. And other world powers trail far behind Iran and China -- shining examples of the firm yet gentle hand of internet censorship. Rest assured, this reporter has an inkling that a nationalistic competition could take hold similar to the space race or peace race. If there's one sport the winter Olympics might add next, certainly it's the sport of suppressing information.

China is not sitting idly by though, as strategic and selective abortions have left 24 million men without mates. The Chinese government believes this strategy will put them in solid first for socially awkward sexually frustrated males that must argue on internet forums while coding day and night taking breaks only for World of Warcraft (the most demanding mistress of them all). An army of hackers angry at everyone else will undoubtedly arise form this group willing to stop the flow of information worldwide.

Failed car analogy, no cookie for you!

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamborghini_tractors.jpg

If only individuals of a species that exhibit a certain trait ("fur color", "eye color", "drug resistance") survive and have offspring, will their descendants not share that certain trait, just like most puppies have the same fur as their parents, like most babies with blonde curly hair have parents that also had blonde curly hair?

There is a population of moths that exhibit a random mixture of black and white pigments, most individuals look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Biston.betularia.7200.jpg

Some individuals of this Peppered Moth have an all black or all white coat, so we have three types of moths: random color, all black, all white.

Some weather or climates heavily select on certain coat colors, because white moths stand out like a sore thumb in 1900's coal-covered forests in England and black moths have a snowball's chance in Hell in light forests and snow covered terrain. Random colored moths blend in best in most environments and while they are more visible in either extreme environmental condition, their chances of survival are fair enough.

Imagine we would spray paint the entire forest black with coal dust, for centuries, just like it was in England, we just need to assume we never run out of coal to do that. Imagine the moths are not really bothered by the coal dust and their overall food sources and their predators conditions remain stable. Now all random and white colored moths are always eaten first by birds, for centuries, selected heavily, that is.

Now imagine we have another species of moth, a blindingly yellow type, say the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Brimstone.

Both species are exposed to the same environment of a pitch-black coal dusted forest. Both have identical predators and food sources.

The Peppered Moth survives in their black-coated variant, while the Common Brimstone, presenting a yellow eat-me sign to all the birds in the area will be swiftly eradicated.

Have the moths adapted to their environment? Has selective pressure brought one species to extinction? Will random and white colored Peppered Moths reappear if the heavily coal-dusted forest clears up after 50 years? Would they also reappear if the forest remained black for 500 or 5000 or 5 million years?

You might have a point if the golden ratio were an entirely arbitrary number and not one derived from a simple geometric relation. Pointing to the golden ratio as evidence for the existence of god is like pointing to occurrences of pi in nature, or the Fibonacci sequence. It isn't god's fingerprints, it's math's fingerprints.

Seriously.

You.

Hahah !! Winders suxors !!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/Nelson_Muntz.png

The explanation for it being "boring" is the same explanation as to why an two elephants walking across an anthill looks boring - you're not watching the details.

One of the Titans they talk about in the summary is an Avatar. It has a volume of 155,000,000 m^3. If they were completely completely spherical, they'd have a radius of 333 meters.

In the opening of the battle (post jump I suppose?) I see at least 6 titans on "our" side of the camera. I'm guessing the distance between the closest ships on either side of the screen is 10 km as a minimum.

Now, one of the smallest ships I can find have a volume of 28,100 m^3. That's a radius of 19 meters. Try spotting those in a field that is tens of thousands meters across. Even if we go up to mid size ships like T2 Battlecruisers we only find a volume of 234,000 m^3, which is sphere with a diameter of 39 meters. Not going to be easy to spot either.

Essentially you're trying to spot the zodiacs in a carrier group picture. And keep in mind that the aircraft carrier in that picture is shorter that the radius of the Titan sphere.

Now, obviously the Titans aren't spheres. That is obvious from the pictures. They're probably on the order of two kilometre+ in length. Essentially the only thing we're seeing in the video is two elephants bluff charging on top of an anthill. It's going to be very boring to watch at a distance, but get up close and you'll see the ants scurrying about trying to fix their nest. But that's not something you can really show in these kinds of videos - that's something you can show in movies with large budgets.

And when you have weapons that can shoot hundreds if not thousands of kilometres in less than a second, and your ship cannot possibly get out of the line of fire, because it is simply too large a target, why would manoeuvring ever be important? It's important for the small ships, but in any kind of meaningful battle of this kind (meaning the ships are moving at identical vectors at almost identical speeds), the only thing manoeuvring can help you with when your ship is several hundred meters across, is turning to present the smallest cross section possible or present the biggest armour to the enemy. If the ship is small, then you can talk about dog fighting and running around trying not to get hit. But if you're watching that, you're going to miss out on the big picture.

Anyone who thinks that there is one and only one stimulus spot on the female genitalia needs to consult a map of the area. Those wings you see there? Those are as pleasurable as the clit, but because they are buried under tissue they are more challenging to get at. I'm pretty sure that the G-Spot is a combination of mood + hitting these things.

Note that this particular map of the female genitalia is fairly recent -- mid 80s if I recall.

Speaking from personal experience as one of the few men on slashdot who's been laid, the G-spot is totally bogus.

However -- there is a hot-button place which is guaranteed to get her off: her anterior and posterior fornices (singlular fornix). Picture. My foolproof technique is to "pinch" the sides of the cervix with my two fingers and then slide the "pinch" forwards and backwards around her cervix so that my fingertips meet in the "front" and the "back while stimulating the anterior and posterior fornices. Kinda hard to describe.

Women frequently complain that messing with the cervix is uncomfortable. DUH, the cervix is a hard "button". You need to get to the soft, sensitive "cul de sac" surrounding the base of the cervix. It can be hard to do with a penis, penises tend to be bigger and dumber than fingers are.

Even with your fingers it can be tough. You may not even be able to reach the fornix if your woman has a deep vagina. Also, don't neglect the clitoris. It is not just that little nub, the clit is a series of expansive bulbs which almost envelops the vagina itself.

best of luck. You can do it. Use the force.

Oh, We've got this guy.

Take a peek... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Ele-brain.png

The brain seems larger, but seeing as the pre-frontal cortex isn't marked its relative size is difficult to guess. It is also worth bearing in mind that elephants are pretty intelligent animals.

Neither I nor anybody else draws these lines. There are certain categories within which living creatures can interbreed, but these categories are fixed and completely outside of our control.

You are dodging the question. If there are God-made animals that fall into distinct categories, it should be possible to clearly classify those categories by observation. If there is no such list of classification I have to assume that your theory of how God created the earth void of all evidence and like just wrong. See ring species for an example of how the clean seperation into kinds of animals just doesn't work in nature.

How many times do such anecdotal observations have to be made before you consider them valid?

The number of anecdotal observation doesn't count, the important part is that they are repeatable. If I find a fossil, somebody else can look at it and analyse it. It is even possible for somebody else to go digging for his own evidence, completly independed of mine. Which is why fossils are pretty good evidence.

No fossils are being made today, because normally organic matter such as dead animals and plants are broken down into elementary parts by microorganisms.

Well, yeah, thats the reason why fossils are extremely rare (i.e. only a few dozens fossils of a species which might have had millions or even billions of creatures). They only form in rare circumstances where the normal decomposition doesn't take place.
For a recent example of fossil formation see Pompeii, where the humans where covered in vulcanic asshes and thus preserved, see Wikipedia for an overview of other ways fossils can form.

How do you know that this is a design mistake?

Because it would be trivial to fix and because it servers exactly no purpose. It is simply an area in your eye that doesn't work.

The 6000 years and billions of years are both based on belief.

The 6000 years are believe, the billions of years are *observation*, big difference there. And its not just one observation pointing at the number, but lots of it. The life of stars, the microwave background, geology, atomic decay, all that stuff points to that 13.7 billion years number.

That is patently false. There are Christians in every part of the world today.

Aehm, no. Religion is quite strictly coupled with location, see this nice map.

Christians took their faith to every continent

That just further proofs my point, unless you indoctrinate people with it, there is not much that they will switch to Christianity on their own.

Evolution supposedly is driven by the mechanism of the survival of the fittest. How does the expending of vital life resources on religious shrines, cathedrals or offerings help survival?

Resources wasted on religion aren't that big of a deal when it comes to survival and quite a few of them would be spend on social interactions anyway, no matter if those interactions are religious in nature or not. And of course ideas spread independed of reproduction and survival, so even harmful ideas could spread quite far, just likes germs do. Time of course also plays a role, you won't change brain patterns with just a 100 generations.

Dinosaurs still exist. We call them "birds".

In particular, they're the decendents of the clade Maniraptora, which includes velociraptor. Many are still remarkably similar to their ancestors -- for example, compare these reconstructed skull images of oviraptors with modern birds (for example, the cassowary)

Obligatory xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/155/

Dinosaurs still exist. We call them "birds".

In particular, they're the decendents of the clade Maniraptora, which includes velociraptor. Many are still remarkably similar to their ancestors -- for example, compare these reconstructed skull images of oviraptors with modern birds (for example, the cassowary)

notability nazis

Mike Godwin is actually and employee of the Wikimedia Foundation :)
Seriously though, notability has been an issue people complain about since the beginning of Wikipedia. There is simply no way of pleasing everyone, no matter where you draw the line. You always have people complaining about "notability nazis" and "we are not /dev/null".

picturephobia (I think due to even stricter fair use constraints but I'm not sure)

I don't think that there is a "picturephobia" in the German Wikipedia. What you are probably referring to is English Wikipedia's fair use rules. We don't have that on the German Wikipedia for two reasons:
a) Ideological reasons: "Fair use" images are proprietary. We want to build a free encyclopedia which everyone is allowed to copy, remix and redistribute. "Fair use" images are extremely limited in their use and cannot have a place in a free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia. I recommend reading the Veganism parable. Interestingly, these strict rules have resulted in a positive effect on release of free images. For example, Ubisoft wanted images of their video games in Wikipedia articles, so they licensed everyone to release screenshots of their games under a free license.
b) Legal reasons. "Fair use" is mainly an US thing, and while Wikimedia servers are located in the US, German Wikipedia generally aims not to break German law. German copyright law is completely different from US law, we don't have a rule equivalent to "fair use".

That's interesting, my experience is completely contrary. I'm a very active Wikipedia contributor and read many English and German articles. My personal impression (and this view is shared by many fellow Wikipedians) is that the coverage of subjects (e.g. chances to find an article about a certain subject) is better on the English Wikipedia, while quality often is better on German Wikipedia.

Unfortunately there is no scientific study (I am aware of) which directly compares German to English Wikipedia in aspects of quality. However, comparisons with other German encyclopedias have been generally supportive of the German Wikipedia (in tests it "won" against Microsoft Encarta and the highly-reputable encyclopedia by Brockhaus). Also, the German Wikipedia was the first one to use Flagged Revisions, a software feature that makes sure every edit is reviewed by an experienced user. Beside that, the German Wikimedia chapter "Wikimedia Deutschland" has done much to facilitate quality improvements (e.g. the Zedler medal for outstandingly good articles; or Wikipedia Academy, an attempt to attract academics as Wikipedia contributors). Although there is no explicit prove, there are many indicators that the German Wikipedia often has articles of higher quality or at least tries to focus more on quality.

To me, it looks closer to a moped than a motorcycle, performs (70cc displacement, 40 mph top speed) closer to a moped (50cc displacement, 35 or so mph top speed) than a motorcycle (125+cc, 100+mph) and seems more similar in cost ($855) to a moped ($$2000).
Duck typing tells me it's a moped.

I don't mean to disdain it; used within it's scope (commuting a couple of kilometres through a busy congested metropolitan area) it's probably superior to a fully-grown motorcycle, but I don't see where, how or why it should be one.

To me, it looks closer to a moped than a motorcycle, performs (70cc displacement, 40 mph top speed) closer to a moped (50cc displacement, 35 or so mph top speed) than a motorcycle (125+cc, 100+mph) and seems more similar in cost ($855) to a moped ($$2000).
Duck typing tells me it's a moped.

I don't mean to disdain it; used within it's scope (commuting a couple of kilometres through a busy congested metropolitan area) it's probably superior to a fully-grown motorcycle, but I don't see where, how or why it should be one.

Distortion guitar is essentially a square wave.

Not really.

A guitar's waveform is complex, so you won't get evenly timed transitions even with infinite overdrive and perfect clipping. Second, infinite overdrive sounds harsh so few guitarists use it (thus the continuing popularity vacuum tube amplifiers). Finally, the sound of electric guitars is also influenced by a speaker cabinet (or simulation thereof) with essentially no treble response.

I used to play with 555 timers for making noise as a kid. The sound has a brain numbing clickety quality. Here is an example at approximately two octaves above middle C (the eighth fret on a guitar's high E string).

Now only few other pieces of the puzzle in the quest for ultimate ultraportable.

Pixel Qi screen, for even longer battery life and legibility in sunlight.

With lower temps & power draw of Pinetrail it might be also possible for netbooks to become routinely cooled passively.

Also just for me and other faithful...uhm...clit ;p (plus preferably as close in overall form to original Lenovo S10 as possible, it was actually very nice) Can't help it, playing Diablo2 in a cathedral during organ concert, on a cemetery on 1 XI night (it looks like this here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wszystkich_swietych_cmentarz.jpg ) and in a train while sitting next to some nuns are things I simply must do. And with touchpad that's not really possible.

No. Most time is usually spent generating pages: the Wikipedia server role page shows it clearly.

He is using stats that say PHP is 10 slower for running through loops, math that type of crap

Yeah, statistics, they are all lies if they don't support my current opinions ;). See for yourself. PHP is between 3 to 116 times slower than C++.

Maybe our agencies don't want to find life yet, as some societal and religious aspects of there being life somewhere else would drive the religious folk crazy, or maybe they don't want to contaminate Europa. Whatever the reason they need to get off of their collective rear ends (asses) and do a mission there before even going back to Mars. I just get tired of the new bright and shiny and unpaid for missions, and some of the more dumb funded one that just go in circles snapping images of useless real estate, when Europa truly deserves, on all levels, a serious series of missions that bring light to what resides under the ice.

Actually, I linked to the wrong Wiki page. This one is more directly relevant, although the concept is the same: Pigeonholing

There's a term for that: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Streisand_effect

[...] OCR [...]

Actually MICR.