Slashdot Mirror
How We Knew AL00667 Would Miss Earth
jefu writes "In January there seems to have been an incident in which it was thought that an object (asteroid) in space might have hit the earth within a couple of days of being spotted. It did miss, though. This story (from NASA/Ames) talks about the discovery of the object and the process that astronomers went through to determine if the asteroid was or was not a threat."
perhaps AL00667 creates MADMEN
Another article on Miss Earth
Have Linux installed at your place in Amsterdam, for cheap
So many to choose, since it was an entire episode, but this one seems appropriate:
Sounds like the doomsday whistle! Ain't been blown for nigh onto three years.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
better yet, send bruce willis up there, and don't tell anyone. That way he might get some money for it if it works and he returns, or we all die, or (the optimal solution) he diverts the asteroid and goes hurtling off into space with it..
---- Design. Invent. Cheese.
Else we'd be meeting all the time travelers from the future
Onlooker1: It would mean the end of life as we know it ? ... but we don't really see a threat to the human species. .... not to mention rabid money hungry CEO types... along with a few cities as collateral damage.
Scientist: No, but it might burn up a few cities and destory 70% of the humans
Onlooker2: So I'd be dead ?
Scientist: But the people left alive will have an excellent chance of survival due to the systematic culling of slashdot trolls
Onlooker1: Why did you keep it under the wraps ?
Scientist: We were kinda hoping it would slag Sanford Wallace in location... and have the Pope claim it was divine intervention
Onlooker3: What about SCO ?
Scientist: Looks like the next one from Kuiper belt would do that clean
PS: maybe you should read "God's Debris" to be frightened by Slashdot.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
After buying a milion cans of baked beans, a zillion beer cans and 10 years worth of Playboy magazines (only for historical purposes, of course) they waited it out for a couple of days in an underground bunker.
Since they didn't felt any shake, it was proven that the meteorite had missed the Earth.
It was further proven that a zillion cans of beer barely lasts a couple of days and that having a million cans of baked beans is pretty useless when you forgot to bring a can-opener
One thing of note is that somehow, 10 years worth of Playboy magazines disapeared without a trace.
NASA Server hit by slashdot asteroid. They didn't see it coming...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Tell me Mr.Politician, what is more important: Survival of mankind or playing the powermonger game with your politician-buddys?
;)
If the asteroid were a political party, you'd find a great deal of people supporting any effort at crushing it.
I think it's time to label asteroids as "liberal" or "terrorist" to get things moving
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Besides everyone knows the world ends in 2017 due to old UNIX Y2K17 bug & embedded NT licence key expiry causing cascade failure of ICBM guidance systems. ;-) lol I will need Lead underpants soon... ha ha ha
Relax, Statically speaking you will probably win the lotto 12 times, get struck by lighting 302 times, and die from stress or cancer 240 million times... likely to happen long before then... ;-)
NASA uses a Cold Fusion server?
Puny Earthlings! We will crush them!
Exciting !!
And maybe my neighbours underground bunker would have finally proven to be useful for things other than coding marathons...
This would also be one hell sure way to get rid of windoze once and for all... only something as distributed as open-source software can survive such a catastrophy... wouldnt it be amazing if entire source code of windows was lost. wow !
Now compare that to the linux source present on millions(?) of computers all over the world. Reminds me of the phoenix...
tisk tisk..
(warning: seriousness levels dangerously low)
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
A collision is a near-miss.
*boom* Look. They nearly missed
Appologies to George Carlin
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Slashdotters can continue to sleep comfortably with the knowledge that TCP/IP is designed to withstand such an event; lets just hope there's a backup of the /. backend in case its server(s) get struck, shorted by the tsunami, or looted by the local villagers.
667... the neighbor of the beast.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
I once ordered $6.66 worth of food from the Taco Bell in Cumberland Gap, Kentucky on 25E. The nice enough, yet misguided Kentucky girl working the cash register nearly fainted. She asked me three times if I wanted to buy something else. I wasn't that concerned about the total, actually. She ended up giving me the 10% or 15% senior citizen discount so that she wouldn't be tainted by taking six dollars and sixty-six cents in her hand.
"how the hell are we going to fund a global defense system instead of funding luxury for 10% of the planet."
Someone's been playing an awfull lot of Civilization. Parhaps if we found another type of luxury on one of our contries squares. =)
We were lucky this time, but it is clear that we need to do something about such threats. Here is what I propose:
We build a nondescript isosceles triangular spaceship, controlled by one man with a joystick. Left and right rotate the ship, up thrusts the ship forward, and down, well, down depends upon your configuration. Optionally, it could throw the ship through hyperspace to some other random point in space, or else it could put deflector shields up around the ship.
In addition to the joystick, the ship's pilot should have access to a red button (it must be red). Pressing the button should cause balls of energy to shoot out of the front of the ship, capable of breaking apart large asteroids, and destroying small ones. Pressing the button should also make a "PCHOW!" sound.
It is our clearest and best long-term option.
Don't forget the tin foil hat to gaurd against the aliens that will likely take advantage of the situation, and an accurate firearm to shoot the ensuing radioactive zombies in the head.
No, 668 would be the neighbor of the beast. 667 would be the guy across the hall. :)
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
So you're saying that he had a "near-misunderstanding" of the term "near-miss"?
Right. "We had a near miss event last night." In theory, as you indicate, you could assume that "near" and "miss" both modify "event," but it is common in American English to modify modifiers, so that near modifies miss, and "near miss" as a phrase modifies "event."
Either way it is, at best, a near misleading phrase with a near threatening probability of being near misinterpretted. You should stay far away from such a near confusing phrase and stick to straightforward language.
Good enlgish makes for bad headlines, though.
-Adam
If it was AL00666 the doomsdayers would've been going nuts about how this is the event that will wipe out all of humanity.
;)
AL00667 reminds me of that "neighbour of the beast" joke
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
Don't know about where you are but around here the Walmarts sell guns and ammo. And there are already a good 30 to 40 employees already inside. Good luck taking over the place.
So in the event of a meteroid strike, I for one will welcome our new Walmart line level employee overlords... As opposed to the Walmart corporate type overlords we have now.
Everybody knows that if you want to stop a killer asteroid, all you have to do is change the gravitational constant of the universe for a few seconds. Trivial, really... Ow, my back!