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I guessed twitter was pointless, but like a celibate monk, I always wondered, "am I missing out on something?"

A quick wiki lookup got me this graph: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/76/Content_of_Tweets_Graphed.png

Now I see that by not using twitter, I am missing out on:
80% pointless babble
8% Chain letters
12% Spam

The UK used to be cool?
When was this, when it was occupied by the Romans?

Much more recently than that. During the Little Ice Age, when the Thames froze over. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/The_Frozen_Thames_1677.jpg Since then, it's been a progressive loss of cool and loss of reason, reaching to today's hideous macchiavelian antics.

"The weather exhibits chaotic behavior ..."
And climate doesn't What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?

"The Earth has been getting warmer [wikipedia.org] since about 10,000 years ago....."
Let's take a look at the Holocene Temperature Variations

It seems like Slashdotters have some kind of aversion to SSL. Below are some example URLs to help cure this sickness:

Ixquick
Wikipedia
TPB

Surprising indeed. There are only about 70 stars within 80 light years of us

That is possibly correct, I don't know an awful lot about it, but that's not what that graph you linked to says. It says there are about 70 stars at a distance of 80 light years. If you want to know the number of stars within 80 light years, then you need to look at the area below the curve. Looks like about (80 * 65) / 2, about 2600 stars.

Surprising indeed. There are only about 70 stars within 80 light years of us

Well.. yes. Not for a 2 month drive-across-the-continent-type vacation, but believe it or not we don't drive around in cars like the one Mr. Bean uses. Besides, as I posted elsewhere on this article, fuel costs roughly €1,5 here in Norway (despite the fact that we are a major producer of oil products). Even so, the fact that you get your fuel almost for free (in comparison) doesn't in any way justify driving a huge monstrosity of an SUV/pickup-truck/whatever just because you might go to Disneyland or you might have to move some heavy shit.

I can't be arsed to do the math right now, but I'd bet that having a sensible car (that accelerates no worse, and probably drives and handles better than a huge SUV or something) offsets the cost of leasing something more roomy that one time per decade you actually go road tripping with your family of five.

I wonder if the cost of digging into the side of the hill and carving out all these facilities is recouped through energy savings very quickly. I guess it all depends on the number of machines they would be running and the cost of electricity in their area- but if it takes 20 years, or even 10 to recoup the cost is it worth it?

It's an old question - opex vs. capex. For long term value, where you see the expense would be accelerating for one factor over time (energy costs) it may make sense to make a large capital expenditure to bring that down. A loan is something a business can eventually pay out to zero. If it's an element that's core to your business, it makes even more sense.

Energy use is a large part of the cost of any data centre. Cost is likely to go up over time.

One of the cool things about digging down for a DC is that you can often tap the thermal differential between the top and the bottom of the installation. If it's even a few degrees difference you could potentially get all your electricity for free.

I don't know much about this project, but:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipeople

STATUS
SYMBOLS=62
SPEED=30
PROGRAM
1 PRINT "NO IT'S NOT."
2 GOTO 1

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Basicprogramming.png

Neither nor. As stated in the article, the diesel generators kicked in, and nothing happened. It was just a glich.

If the generators weren’t working too, though, then the super-cooling would die. And that would mean the superconducting cables would stop being superconducting. Imagine the tiny white cable that you see here, getting all the power of the huge array of cables next to it. Now imagine it times ten.
Along the whole tunnel.

This then causes the liquid helium to vaporize/ignite/explode. Something like that.

I don’t think there would be anything left.

(And as always in nature, everything in between can also happen (except on a quantum level). And there are other factors (dimensions) with their own scales. Then on top of that, everything is relative. ;)

Afghanistan is near to Iran, Pakistan and China, far more useful testing grounds.

Here's a picture of five of them in action.

The law here is slowly shifting in the other direction. Good example: bulletproof vests. Who's allowed to own them? Govt and police only. The founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they heard that. If it had been up to them it'd be the other way around. Make the government's "soldiers" resistant to citizen gunfire and not vice-versa? Defeats the purpose of the amendment to a degree.

Citation? I've never heard of any ban on these in the US. wikipedia seems to indicate there is no such thing except for convicted violent felons.

Here's a picture of five of them in action.

In a couple million years, radioactive waste will be much less 'hot' than the (naturally occurring) fuel that went in. Actually, even in a couple thousand years that will be true. Things that are very radioactive, like spent fuel, have short half lives and are used up relatively quickly.

Please see: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spent_nuclear_fuel_decay.png

This is unlike waste from chemical reactions which in many cases will last practically forever. Please don't FUD nuclear, as it's one of our best options.

It is available on Wikimedia Commons here.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

What I find very telling and most undermining to this hypothesis is the simple fact that soybeans were not introduced to Europe and the United States until the 18th century, and did not become a significant crop until the 20th. Given that the Voyinch manuscript is thought to be from the 15th - 16th century, the supposed translation--which claims to identify a soia = soybean plant--has quite a bit of explaining to do.

... along the same lines, do you notice any resemblance between the "soybean" illustration in the manuscript and these actual soybean roots?

I don't.

Perhaps, but it's a pretty lame paper. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. CLaiming that as an outsider, a person cracked something that linguists and cryptographers have been attempting to decrypt for well over 50 years is an extraordinary claim, and that paper is no extraordinary proof. Also, you're being a bit dismissive of the letter distribution reasoning. Italian, even ancient Italian, is not some lost language. Philologists know the letter distributions for the whole gamut of spelling grammar and vocabulary changes, thanks to period texts, and predictable language shifts (for example, see Grimm's law). If the character frequency matched up to any known language, this would've been uncovered by now.

Since you're not a botanist (nor am I) how do you know what garlic looked like 600 years ago?

Well, here's an illustration from the 15th century. Notice any bulbous feature that is lacking in the Voynich sketch? Notice they don't even bother to depict the root system in the 15th century sketch unlike the Voynich. My point was, not a single one of those plants relayed the distinguishing features you would obvious take care to note on the plant--all she offers is the leaf of stachys that has a hilarious tuber below it in the Voynich sketch but nothing in her botanical book! An obvious stretch of the imagination is the rose bush with no roses.

When corn was first cultivated, it looked like what we call "baby corn" today. It wasn't until centuries of selection and cross-breeding that we got the much larger corn that everyone knows.

I'm not sure where you found information that plants have changed dramatically in a few hundred years. While it's true that they have changed dramatically over thousands of years and since the advent of agriculture, 600 years is not the same as 6,000 years. While you're kind of right that thousands of years changed plants, I assure you that most if not all of today's plants look the same as they did 600 years ago.

You can see the fence in this picture

Here's Richard Stallman's view on Cloud computing [about 40s in]:

[cloud computing] is so vague (or shall we say, nebulous) that it can't be used for meaningful statements. Basically what the term means is, don't pay attention to who has your data, or who controls any part of the computing you do, just ignore it. And ignoring it is what you shouldn't do.

If you let someone else control your access to your own files, consider that they might have a different idea of appropriate access to those files.

Frankly, I think a 5 inch gun is a bit extreme - I think these would do well.

I completely agree. If you're in international waters, these idiots have whatever is coming to them. I think two of these would be more than sufficient to turn them into fish food.

if we're into shuttle porn, why don't you post a link to a photo with a full load (in the cargo bay)?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Atantis_Approaching_ISS_STS129.jpg

Try http://download.wikimedia.org/. Note that the files there are huge.

Ice age? Not yet, but the Vostok cores show that these runups in temperature and CO2 have previously preceded a quick and large drop in temperature.

And I could be wrong, but the graph you linked, the graph I linked, and this other graph all indicate that the current temperature anomaly is well below the previous peaks. (Current temperature anomaly below 0.6C; previous peaks hit a max of about 2.0C.) If correct, your collapses/melts/openings/heaves aren't anything new, either.

I'm willing to learn, if CO2 levels are off the chart, and CO2 and temp are correlated, why temperature isn't closer to, or past, the previous peaks.

TSG

I had more than one banking professional tell me, that if you want to have your money well handled, you should avoid using banks at all.

Every time you put money on one of their accounts, they can lend out ten times that amount (yes, that’s it fact imaginary money) to other people at a interest. If you use one of their funds or something like that, it’s even worse, since they take most of it, but if it goes bad, you pay for most of it.

And when you lend money... well the method goes like this: Take an example economy 100 people. Now lend all 100 people 100 dollar at 1% interest. Then they have to pay it back at the end. But they still will only have 100 times 100 dollar. So for 99 to pay the 101 dollar back, one of them has to go bankrupt. Because where would the money come from? All money you earn always comes from someone else in the economy. And he either also earned it from someone else in the same (global) economy, or he had to lend the above mentioned imaginary money from a bank. It’s futile. There is no way around one of them being fucked at the end.

But then, what is the point of a bank, if there is nothing left? Well... exactly.

The only idea that now may be left, is the easy transfer of money. Put it on an account, so another one can instantly draw it out again. This is what I’m doing right now.
And for lending money: Well, I go the old-fashioned way: I save up money that I get from earning more from working harder. It’s harder (and it should be hard), but at the end, whatever I get out from it, will be mine, mind and mine!

Now for the even worse part:
On top of all that... what is that green bill in your wallet? What is that “money”?
Well, if you look at it, it is the debt of someone else. You are literally holding a piece of debt in your hands.
It is not bound to any real thing with a real value. Like being a paper that says that you get X real physical gold pieces when turning it in at a bank.
In the EU it’s even worse. The “money” in not associated with anything anymore. Only the belief of people is giving that paper and worth.

Well, that can all be good and well, as you might say.
But now imagine, if that belief... or that credit... breaks down...
Then your one hundred trillion dollars can suddenly become worth just about one cent.

And funnily, this still can work. But in reality, there is a nice scheme if you yourself are the one printing the money: Just keep all your own money in gold. And then twist the value of the paper money at will, depending on who has more of it: If all the money is in their hands, let the money crash to worthlessness. And if it is in your hands, let it rise.
In essence this gets you work for free! If it costs twice as much work as the money was worth when they got it, to earn the money to pay you back, you got the work difference for free.
Rinse and repeat.

And you wondered why after the trillion dollar “bailout” flowing to the banks, the value of money suddenly rose, and why when the economy and life went upwards in the Clinton era, suddenly an election fraud brought people into power that created a big war for which they had to lend as much money as possible...?!?

The nice thing is: Banks and the federal reserve can only fuck with you, if you use their money!!
This is a bit hard in the real world, of course. ^^
But look at what the banks do. Do it, and do it better! Learn your stuff!
If they can profit from it, so can you!

One trick is to just always have as little “active”/paper money as possible. Always put it straight into real goods, gold/silver/$otherValueGainingOrStableResource or (if you are wealthy) houses, and similar stuff that can make you more money.

It doesn't really matter in the web as 90% of the time is spent hitting the database.

Depends on the application. Wikipedia is much more CPU-bound than database-bound. Look at the database (db*) vs. application (srv*) servers lists here: there are at least five times as many app servers as DB servers, at a quick glance. A typical request that hits the backend spends (IIRC) tens of milliseconds in the database, hundreds in PHP. Try formatting 500 or 5000 rows of a table when each one takes 1 ms – because yes, that happens when you try writing nice abstract formatting stuff in PHP.

The website I administer is also much more CPU- than database-bound. Generating the front page of the forums is 602 ms, with only 14 ms in MySQL and the rest in PHP. This is a >20G database, by the way.

I really don't see how any typical web app could spend more than a few tens of milliseconds per request at the database, unless it's poorly written (too much/too little normalization, bad indexes, etc.). But it's very easy to do hundreds of ms of pure computation in a slow language like PHP, even if your code is well-written. Are most web apps really DB-bound? I just haven't seen it, personally.

Is there a country with no extradition treaties?
I would like to seriously haX0r some US servers.

Here is a map of US extradition treaties to get you started:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/United_States_extradition_treaties_countries.PNG

"Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors, and never invite them round to dinner." -- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Actually the one thing that would really benefit wikipedia is a feature allowing multiple versions of the same page/subject. Allow total free editing, then have a "version responsable" that comprises his version of the page, accepting or denying edits as he sees fit.

A sort of cross between the current wikipedia and google's knol.

This is called Flagged Revisions, and it's currently in testing. Jimbo Wales is pushing for its adoption on the main Wikipedia namespace. Go to that link to try it out and see how it's working out! :)

Har har har. How very funny.

Actually, the Wikipedia:Statistics page gets you all the stats there's to be had.

Also, Wikimedia:Statistics is showing a steady influx of New Wikipedians and Active Wikipedians, albeit not quite as many as previously.

Hmm, I wonder if this is more a publicity stunt in relation with their current funds drive?

At least, "Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply" should probably have been "Wikipedia shows signs of maturity as number of new volunteers falls slighly".

Har har har. How very funny.

Actually, the Wikipedia:Statistics page gets you all the stats there's to be had.

Also, Wikimedia:Statistics is showing a steady influx of New Wikipedians and Active Wikipedians, albeit not quite as many as previously.

Hmm, I wonder if this is more a publicity stunt in relation with their current funds drive?

At least, "Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply" should probably have been "Wikipedia shows signs of maturity as number of new volunteers falls slighly".

Har har har. How very funny.

Actually, the Wikipedia:Statistics page gets you all the stats there's to be had.

Also, Wikimedia:Statistics is showing a steady influx of New Wikipedians and Active Wikipedians, albeit not quite as many as previously.

Hmm, I wonder if this is more a publicity stunt in relation with their current funds drive?

At least, "Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply" should probably have been "Wikipedia shows signs of maturity as number of new volunteers falls slighly".

Can your electric universe explain these results yet:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Firas_spectrum.jpg/724px-Firas_spectrum.jpg

Last Post!

Yea, when Jimbo Wales decreed to go Ogg-only for Wikipedia back in 2004, there was many people saying something along the line of this. The support of Ogg in browsers for them is very good news, as it eliminated a lot of the pain that had existed for years.

I could go on, but I have a feeling that it still wouldn't convince you. Global Warming is not a myth. True, the Earth does go through cycles. I don't dispute that. However, the rate of climate change is far faster than previous cyclic rates. The rate now versus that of the pre-industrial age is much, much faster. The global ecology cannot adapt fast enough to the change. What used to take thousands of years now takes hundreds, and increasingly, decades.

Liar.

Yes. But then I'm looking at this chart: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

And this chart shows the Earth is at its coldest point in the last 500 million years: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Absolutely true!

The planet, for the last few million years, has been much cooler than it is in dinosaur times. In fact, ice caps are an unusual phenomenon for Earth, at least for that period since life left the oceans.

This has nothing to do with the anthropogenic global warming (non)-controversy, but it is a true thing.

If you like to put it that way, the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are, crudely, returning the planet to the climate it had millions of years ago.

But this is a different point, of course. Saying "the Earth used to be much warmer" falsify the discussion "the emissions of carbon dioxide are currently warming the Earth."

Yes. But then I'm looking at this chart: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

And this chart shows the Earth is at its coldest point in the last 500 million years: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Absolutely true!

The planet, for the last few million years, has been much cooler than it is in dinosaur times. In fact, ice caps are an unusual phenomenon for Earth, at least for that period since life left the oceans.

This has nothing to do with the anthropogenic global warming (non)-controversy, but it is a true thing.

If you like to put it that way, the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are, crudely, returning the planet to the climate it had millions of years ago.

But this is a different point, of course. Saying "the Earth used to be much warmer" falsify the discussion "the emissions of carbon dioxide are currently warming the Earth."

I'ma let you finish, but we already got a reply to the original message!

Yes. But then I'm looking at this chart: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

And this chart shows the Earth is at its coldest point in the last 500 million years:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Yes. But then I'm looking at this chart: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

And this chart shows the Earth is at its coldest point in the last 500 million years:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Yes. Here's what the earth looks like over 65 and 500+ million years. Both graphcs show that we are actually in a COOL period and have been for some time:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Yes. Here's what the earth looks like over 65 and 500+ million years. Both graphcs show that we are actually in a COOL period and have been for some time:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Laffer said that reducing taxes stimulates the economy as long as government reduces spending to match inflows.

If it's as accurate as his Laffer curve, I'd have to say he was probably full of it.

The actual Laffer curve, as best as Martin Gardner could figure out, looks a bit like this.

"Fogbank", widely presumed to be a heavy-metal doped aerogel material.

We can manufacture it again. There was a gap - we couldn't for a while, but it's back in production.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/FOGBANK

How the old is made new once more. Back in the early '80s we were only too happy to get away from that model... Just goes to show. Just as well I kept that card-punch (a Burroughs equivalent of this), maybe I'll need it again in a few years.

It is worse, because it's an acronym.

Which "it"? When you pronounce the initials "IE", you get "Aieee!" which is the sound of a web developer trying to make a site work around IE 6's 12% support for JavaScript.

They should elect this guy to take care of their pirate problem. Eh, you could do worse.