Netflix has had the USPS's attention for quite a while, thank you. It pays them to scan the barcode on the return envelopes and transmit it to the company, putting that disk in "Returned" status immediately. Mail a disk in the morning and you often get an email titled "We've received..." the same evening. That's one reason why their turnaround is so fast.
Could it be that the crater has been formed recently?
Yes -- if another explanation hadn't surfaced already, it could have been new, but with very low probability.
Do things still hit the moon?
Yes, but their mean size has been decreasing for eons as the Earth/Moon system sweeps out the rocks in its path. Little bitty ones still hit it all the time just as they hit Earth, but the bigger a crater is, the lower the probability that it's recent.
No, extremely small. Over an area that small, you can pretty well assume the equipotential surface is a sphere.
The reason for the flatness of salt flats is that the salt gets soupy in the rainy season, gravity smooths it out, and then the water evaporates out leaving a hard surface -- although if there's a substantial prevailing wind during the wet season, you get some deviations.
No. It means every point is at the same gravitational potential, and the equipotential surfaces are not spheres. Close, but different.
For example, Mt. Chimborazu in Ecuador, 21000 feet above the equipotential surface we call "mean sea level", is farther from the center of the earth than Everest at 29000 feet.
Bear in mind these are small differences: if you could make a perfect scale model of the sea-level surface the size of a billiard ball, it would be rounder and smoother than the ball.
Of course they attack small business. Big business has the money to fight back with armies of lawyers.
Not the only reason. The bigger the business, the more people have direct knowledge of license cheating, and the more people are IT-savvy enough to figure it out...the probability of keeping the secret becomes asymptotic to zero. Big business knows what it can and can't get away with.
Ashton-Tate wasn't above having somebody ELSE's code in their products either. When they wrote the "laser burn" copy protection routine for dBase III, they needed to put a hook in the BIOS -- which wasn't so easy in those days of expensive memory, because the BIOS used to run directly from ROM instead of being shadowed out into RAM. So they wrote their own BIOS -- by which I mean, they copied some 700 bytes of the IBM Fixed Disk BIOS (which was published in the PC-XT user manual), added the hook, and then hid the dirty deed under an encryption routine that was absurdly simple (although very tedious on a floppy machine) to penetrate.
It was obvious they knew they were writing a pirate product, because they went through the code and swapped arithmetic and logical shift instructions wherever they were certain to produce identical results, presumably in order to get the fraction of identical bytes down.
That could be pretty hard to establish in court...but if you carried out some highly visible attempt to steer the hurricane, and it hooked a sudden left and creamed Houston, my cousin Bernie the Attorney could have your ass.
Slashdot Mirror
Netflix has had the USPS's attention for quite a while, thank you. It pays them to scan the barcode on the return envelopes and transmit it to the company, putting that disk in "Returned" status immediately. Mail a disk in the morning and you often get an email titled "We've received..." the same evening. That's one reason why their turnaround is so fast.
rj
Perhaps that's because they've had their houses since before subdividers began putting a stop to amateur radio with covenants against antennas.
rj
Yes -- if another explanation hadn't surfaced already, it could have been new, but with very low probability.
Do things still hit the moon?
Yes, but their mean size has been decreasing for eons as the Earth/Moon system sweeps out the rocks in its path. Little bitty ones still hit it all the time just as they hit Earth, but the bigger a crater is, the lower the probability that it's recent.
rj
I'll bet the Man With No Eyes would consider an offer, Luke...
rj
No, extremely small. Over an area that small, you can pretty well assume the equipotential surface is a sphere.
The reason for the flatness of salt flats is that the salt gets soupy in the rainy season, gravity smooths it out, and then the water evaporates out leaving a hard surface -- although if there's a substantial prevailing wind during the wet season, you get some deviations.
rj
No. It means every point is at the same gravitational potential, and the equipotential surfaces are not spheres. Close, but different.
For example, Mt. Chimborazu in Ecuador, 21000 feet above the equipotential surface we call "mean sea level", is farther from the center of the earth than Everest at 29000 feet.
Bear in mind these are small differences: if you could make a perfect scale model of the sea-level surface the size of a billiard ball, it would be rounder and smoother than the ball.
rj
You forgot ex-spouses.
rj
Not the only reason. The bigger the business, the more people have direct knowledge of license cheating, and the more people are IT-savvy enough to figure it out...the probability of keeping the secret becomes asymptotic to zero. Big business knows what it can and can't get away with.
rj
It won't be infringement unless the software guys copy the Boy Scouts' core activities:
-Hanging out in all-male groups.
-Dressing up in matching outfits.
-Doing arts & crafts projects.
-Being rewarded with jewelry.
-Excluding gays.
rj
Ashton-Tate wasn't above having somebody ELSE's code in their products either. When they wrote the "laser burn" copy protection routine for dBase III, they needed to put a hook in the BIOS -- which wasn't so easy in those days of expensive memory, because the BIOS used to run directly from ROM instead of being shadowed out into RAM. So they wrote their own BIOS -- by which I mean, they copied some 700 bytes of the IBM Fixed Disk BIOS (which was published in the PC-XT user manual), added the hook, and then hid the dirty deed under an encryption routine that was absurdly simple (although very tedious on a floppy machine) to penetrate.
It was obvious they knew they were writing a pirate product, because they went through the code and swapped arithmetic and logical shift instructions wherever they were certain to produce identical results, presumably in order to get the fraction of identical bytes down.
rj
Do you know how much a car costs? You can buy one for $500 and you can buy one for $100,000...that's six times as big a ratio.
rj
...and it pisses gasoline, right?
rj
Perhaps they could offer a new alarm tone: SHUCKSHUCK.
rj
Unacceptable table manners, that's what. Chewing things up and spitting them out...what kind of role model is that? Think of the children.
rj
Bringing them to Show & Tell, matter of fact. Miami, as late as 1958.
rj
rj
Well, that's what ValleyWag says he was doing...
rj
No, one door to the left in the clutch room.
rj
(1) Set fire to it.
(2) Pump it into your gas tank and start your engine.
(3) Drink some booze and take a leak.
But considering the amount of energy it takes to make alcohol in the first place, why would you want to get water from such expensive ingredients?
rj
And you're right; it has no geologic processes. But it has some selenologic processes...;-)
rj
Everybody on Earth and 124 planets just like it actually...assuming your standard for "unable to touch another" is three feet apart.
But it would smell worse than the feedlots in Vernon, Texas do now.
rj
Same place, little higher, five or six hours earlier. Comets don't much care what your longitude is.
rj
...Comcast?
rj
The price of that toilet seat just keeps going up and up...it started at $600. Oh, and the entire bathroom interior came with it.
rj
That could be pretty hard to establish in court...but if you carried out some highly visible attempt to steer the hurricane, and it hooked a sudden left and creamed Houston, my cousin Bernie the Attorney could have your ass.
rj