Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.
Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
You didn't specify your assumption of 1-byte (ASCII) characters. Unicode characters, at 2 bytes each, would then fit half as many per petabyte, making only 29,733.5657 times around the equator.
Sorry, no. Unfortunately, this process only works on injured tissue, since the stem cells need to have an example of healthy tissue to emulate. In the case of idiots, it would only create more of the brain they already have, which is clearly useless to them (and society).
The process could be used to create tremendous pressure in the heads of idiots by growing more brain, which would cause a huge headache for them, so maybe they'd stay home and away from the rest of us. I think it would be more economical, though, to sever the spinal cords of idiots, and use them as human subjects for further testing. Possibly as the "placebo" group.
I use nmap all the time for general networking to find out what service are running on a server that I can use.
Don't worry, we will be subpoenaing Slashdot for your IP address. Soon, we will be sending agents to confiscate your computer, your CDs and anything containing the letters n, m, a or p. All for your computing protection.
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If that is true, then the converse must be true too (after all it is a zero-sum game) - his viewing the ad early does not cause the deals to be any less expensive for Circuit City.
Ah, not true. Retail is most definitely not a zero-sum game. Retail is, to quote Steve Martin at the carnival in "The Jerk", "a profit deal."
1. If I intend to buy a PS3, and don't know the price is going to drop in 3 weeks, I'll buy it. I'm not getting ripped off, I'm just paying full price for it. A price that I knew and agreed to ahead of time.
2. If I only intend to buy the PS3 if the price drops, I will buy one in 3 weeks when the price comes down. It won't even have cost me the 3 weeks, because I would have waited that long to buy it whether I knew the price was coming 3 weeks early or 1 week early.
3. If I want to buy a PS3 regardless of the price, but I do happen to know that the price is going to drop in 3 weeks, I'll wait 3 weeks to buy it. That saves me money.
If I am Circuit City, I want a lot of people in category 1, I am neutral (with a slight positive bias) toward the people in category 2, and I am being robbed by the people in category 3. The cheap category 3 people have used insider information (obtained illegally, in all likelihood) to give me less money than I would have received otherwise, considering I would have sold them a PS3 at $500 2 weeks ago, but they are now buying the same PS3 for $400. I still paid the same for that particular PS3 (barring any rebates Sony may or may not give retailers for the price change), plus I carried the cost of holding it in my inventory for 2 weeks longer than I originally would have if not for the leak.
It's only logical for a retailer to try to stop this, and they are using the means set up for exactly this reason by the United States justice system. If you replace "PS3" with "Stock in Company X", it's called insider trading, and it is very much illegal, not to mention immoral and unethical.
There are several breed-specific and general rescue organizations that will foster and adopt-out "special needs" animals, as well as "healthy" animals. My particular favorite is the Guardian Angel Basset Rescue (http://www.bassetrescue.org) which features pages of special needs animals (http://www.bassetrescue.org/homeless/index.htm) for adoption. Or you can go to Pets with Disabilities (http://www.petswithdisabilities.org), which has an adoption program as well.
Amen. Also, gp assumes that we have one brain working to build an artificial brain, but that's not the case. Even if I agreed with the stipulation that a mind can only build something less complex than itself (which I don't), you have to take into account the "networking" of several minds, and the fact that our minds are able to imagine and conceive of things outside the current realm of reality. The fact that we are discussing whether or not we can create an intelligence equal to (or greater than) our own is, to me, a pretty convincing argument that we just might be able to.
Actually, took about 20 minutes. 19 minutes trying to figure out why the PCs kept blue-screening on boot-up, 45 seconds to actually boot once they figured it out, 10 seconds to cancel the Internet Setup Wizard when they tried to get online, and 5 seconds of online time before the 0wnage began.
Microsoft... If it can't boot, they can't hack it. Security through sheer crappiness.
You can't hope to make spam unprofitable by educating users unless you manage to reach every single one of them
So we'll spam the users to educate them about spamming! It's brilliant!
And while they're learning, maybe they'd like to think about purchasing my proven system for getting wealthy with little money and no risk, or look at the latest low re-financing rates.
I didn't see it mentioned before, but you will definitely want to bring a good Deet-based mosquito repellent. Mosquitos are always bad in that area of the country, but with all the additional standing water they'll be much worse. This is not merely a convenience item, either. West Nile is pretty big down there, and you don't want to come down with that (or worse) for your philanthropic efforts. Might also want to take some citronella candles and such for when you're sitting around at night.
Also, when you're working, make sure you wear jeans, long socks, long sleeve shirts, and a good set of work boots (steel toed, preferably). There are going to be a lot of deer ticks in the areas you're in, and you don't want Lyme's either.
Take a good sunblock (and plenty of it), and wear a hat with a brim, to keep the sun-effects down. And make sure you drink lots of water. It's hard enough to do the work you're going to be doing without adding a 3rd degree sun burn and/or heat stroke to the mix.
For tools, there are plenty of good lists above, and the tools depend on the job you're going to do. Good general tools are crowbars, shovels, hammers, chainsaws (with gas), a sawzall, sledge hammers or wrecking hammers,
For gear, bring sturdy jeans and long-sleeve work shirts, plenty of dry socks (you will definitely want to get out of the nasty sweaty ones pretty often) thick leather gloves, good steel-toed work boots, safety goggles (preferably the sunglasses type) and a good backpack, rucksack or workman's belt to hold the gear. Make sure you put a good, comfortable insole in the boots, to keep down blisters, and add some blister balm or heel balm every now and again. You'll also need to bring along a really well stocked first aid kit, since a lot of the people doing the work will be untrained. Band-aids, gauze, disinfectant pads, antibacterial creams, burn cream, aloe, blister cream/ointment, tweezers (lots of splinters), latex (or latex-free) gloves, splints/slings/braces, etc... Also, have everyone carry their ID with them, and a card or something with their name, any medical conditions or allergies, contact information for emergencies, their primary care physician's information and such, just in case. A good place for that is http://www.incaseofemergency.com./
As for what the people down there will be needing, your time and assistance are probably the best thing you can give. Outside of that, they'll need the basic daily necessities: food, clean water, medical/first-aid supplies, diapers, baby formula, etc... Just remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when you're thinking about what to take for the victims. Fulfill the physiological needs first (food, water, etc...), then you can work on the others.
Kudos to you and others like you who are doing their part to help. Good luck down there, and let us know how it goes.
Actually, most episodes of shows like Law & Order: SVU and others, get the "TV-MA" rating (at least here in the States), which is essentially the same as the "R" rating for movies.
All the "R" means is that people under 17 can't watch the movie unless an adult is with them (ostensibly giving them permission, as a responsible adult, to view the content in question). The same theory is supposed to hold true with television, that if you don't want your kids watching "TV-MA" content, you either monitor and control what they watch, or you get something like the V-Chip.
Also, the ratings system in the USA (whether right or wrong, I'm not saying), places more emphasis on visible actions than on words. Law & Order talks about the violent crimes, without actually showing them, while movies will actually show the violence and such, therefore the higher ratings.
Admittedly it's in a crime drama setting, but there is a reasonable amount of emphasis on the math.
Actually, the crime drama setting is good for science exposure. If you want someone to be interested in a particular profession or area of study, you have to show that area of study in the best possible light (i.e., most exciting, glamorous, lucrative, etc...). You don't show the 99% of computer scientists who work in cubicles, labs or universities, you show the 1% who work for law enforcement or espionage agencies.
Although I would actually like to see a nice hour-long drama solely about mid-level engineers at a software company:
"Dammit man, you've got a segmentation fault! Watch your pointer arithmetic!"
"Don't shout at me! I just had a really bad performance review!"
[ Fade to 45 minutes of lead character reading/. ]
The largest part of the cost does not come from recovering the data (although that will be costly), it is from the cost to actually analyze the data and perform any necessary calculations. Despite the current economic conditions, PhD's don't work cheap, at least, not the ones with the required skill sets for this analysis.
Additionally, the storage cost is going to be a bit in and of itself. I am not sure of the density and capacity of the tapes NASA used, but 15 years worth of every useful piece of data (observations, navigation, status, etc...) has got to be a lot. Just "ripping it to a hard drive" would require a bit of hard drive space, and would be a bit useless, since they would just be moving it from one aging magnetic media to a slightly newer magnetic media. They are probably hoping to either move the data to some sort of optical storage, or read it directly from the tapes.
Phobos will indeed likely be dead, since it is far too small to hold an atmosphere of any substance, but that's not the point of the mission. Since Phobos is so small (and hence, has much lighter gravity) it is much easier to land on and take off from than the main planetary body. The escape velocity on Phobos is in the neighborhood of.01 km/s, compared to Earth's +/- 11 km/s at the equator. As such, it provides a decent staging base for missions to the planet itself. Also, much attention has been paid to Mars, and relatively little to its sattelites, so it would be a chance for some interesting science.
Additionally, as others have stated, the currently accepted theory for the formation of Earth's moon is that, while the Earth was still hot (i.e., mostly molten), a rather large object smacked the crap out of it (that's a technical term) and made it spit out a ball of really hot stuff that took up orbit around Earth and cooled (faster than the Earth, due to it's size) into Luna. However, Phobos does not seem to have been formed in this way. Phobos is a rather oblong shaped object, unlike objects that coalesce from space debris, which tend to be spherical. The prevailing theory on Phobos is that it is a captured asteroid, likely a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, which gives us additional scientific reason to go there.
Yes, it would become acceptable to carry the PSP at work in that case. However, that is entirely dependent on the fact that there is decent PIM software for it becoming general knowledge, outside of the geek sector. Even then, I'd still prefer a traditional PDA. I can't see myself using a D-pad (or a keyboard either, for that matter) to select a date from a calendar, which is muy importante in PIM software.
Don't get me wrong, I love my PSP, but I don't think it will ever replace my PDA. Especially since everyone at work already figures I'm playing games on my PDA, what would they think if I whipped out the PSP?
Saw the play in Chicago, before it started it's broadway run, and I have to agree about Hank Azaria. In the scene where the Knights Who Say Ni are no longer the Knights Who Say Ni, he was fantastic. Even threw in a bit of Moe when he described what they now said.
We were lucky, since it was the last performance before heading to New York. Eric Idle actually showed up and did a few lines as the narrator, before being run off stage by the actor who was actually narrating. Not sure if that was in the rest of the performances, but I enjoyed it.
Basically, SCO, Maureen O'Gara, et. al. can't attack Groklaw because everything they present (with the exception of the legal commentary, often provided by professional lawyers) is court record, and therefore not subject to criticism. Groklaw points out the documents, and provides a layman's translation of the documents, but doesn't make any claims as to the validity of claims or evidence contained therein.
So, if you can't attack your opponent's position, you attack him or her directly. It happens all the time in the political arena (if you vote for my opponent, you will be voting for a convicted puppy-kicker), as well as the legal arena (character witnesses and credibility attacks, anyone?), and often in the journalistic world (hell, that's basically what journalism is these days), so it was just a matter of time before the mud was slung over the technical fence.
What's really fantastic is, in the O'Gara "article" under discussion, the only way she backs up her implication that PJ is an IBM lackey is by pointing out that she lives in "IBM Territory". So, I'm sure, do hundreds of thousands of others. Is everyone in this area an IBM stooge, O'Gara? Then, MOG goes on to attack the woman's religion, for crying out loud! So she holds a religious belief you yourself don't subscribe to. Big deal. You know, SCO is located in Utah, and they have lots of Mormons there, maybe Darl & Co. are a bunch of Latter Day Saints stooges and kooks.
Everyone, open your eyes! It's so obvious that the Mormon Church, Brigham Young University and the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee are behind the SCO actions!
Nah, it's a volunteer position, no real power and no pay. The guy probably isn't even allowed to ban MAC addresses (I'd bet), and any policy he comes up with is probably just going to be taken as a "suggestion" by the unwashed masses.
If possible, try to come up with a system for re-establishing connections that conveniently "forgets" chronic offenders. If they can't get their daily dose of SWG (or whatever the kids are playing these days), they'll come into line soon enough. Make network problems their problem. If you've got a machine that's ghost pinging away, throttle them down at the switch, or "accidentally" block their IP at the firewall.
If you get really frustrated, try making it fun for yourself. I mean, you've got a pretty good idea of whose machines are vulnerable, right? I'm sure you can find some creative way to relieve your stress with a list of vulnerable IPs and open ports. Not that I'm advocating any illegal or unethical activity or anything. *wink wink*
OK, just so you know where I stand, I am by no means a "fundamentalist" or a "neo-conservative" or a "right-wing nut" or any of that. I am personally of the belief that whatever religious beliefs (or lack thereof) you happen to hold are your own damn business, and don't, in my eyes, make a bit of difference regarding your value as a human being. I am staunchly against the preference of one religion over any other in government and business, and think the government should keep its nose out of that particular arena. However, without RTFA (and IANAL, and all that), I can say that I don't think this Intelligent Design teaching strictly violates the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. The Constitution merely states that the government cannot give preference to one religion over another. In this case, the school is simply teaching a spiritual subject. It's not even a Judeo-Christian topic, since Intelligent Design does not strictly mean the Biblical God, or even technically a God at all, was involved in the design process.
Now, as to Intelligent Design being a "viable alternative" to the "flawed" theory of evolution, I do disagree with that. I don't believe the theory of evolution to be flawed, just incomplete (as most theories are). I also don't see how a state institution can feel that Intelligent Design is a viable alternative. Next thing you know, we'll be teaching how the moon landings were faked by the space aliens that assassinated Kennedy and replaced Richard Nixon with a clone/cyborg hybrid bent on world domination. Or something.
I'm sure there are those who will disagree, which is fine, and I'm sure if I RTFA I'll see that they are specifying some sort of Christianity-based version of the topic, but I don't care. In short, the school board needs to wise up, and the ACLU needs to chill out and re-read the Constitution.
It's useless as a defense, but not useless when giving mitigating circumstances. In essence, it won't help when determining the verdict, but it should be considered when determining the sentence.
"Somebody tell me I can't think on my own."
OK, you can't think on your own.
Oh, maybe you meant "Somebody tell me, I can't think on my own." In that case, you're hosed either way. You either hate it and get the fanboys all riled up, or you love it and get the anti-fanboys steamed. Or you could do what I do: "I'm sorry, I am not prepared to make a statement either way at this time. However, I will support the right of all involved parties to their particular point of view."
Slashdot Mirror
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.
Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
Just to poke the bear...
You didn't specify your assumption of 1-byte (ASCII) characters. Unicode characters, at 2 bytes each, would then fit half as many per petabyte, making only 29,733.5657 times around the equator.
Ooh! A rare opportunity for a Judge Dredd quote!
"I am the law!"
Sorry, no. Unfortunately, this process only works on injured tissue, since the stem cells need to have an example of healthy tissue to emulate. In the case of idiots, it would only create more of the brain they already have, which is clearly useless to them (and society).
The process could be used to create tremendous pressure in the heads of idiots by growing more brain, which would cause a huge headache for them, so maybe they'd stay home and away from the rest of us. I think it would be more economical, though, to sever the spinal cords of idiots, and use them as human subjects for further testing. Possibly as the "placebo" group.
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Ihre ganze Unterseite sind gehören uns!
1. If I intend to buy a PS3, and don't know the price is going to drop in 3 weeks, I'll buy it. I'm not getting ripped off, I'm just paying full price for it. A price that I knew and agreed to ahead of time.
2. If I only intend to buy the PS3 if the price drops, I will buy one in 3 weeks when the price comes down. It won't even have cost me the 3 weeks, because I would have waited that long to buy it whether I knew the price was coming 3 weeks early or 1 week early.
3. If I want to buy a PS3 regardless of the price, but I do happen to know that the price is going to drop in 3 weeks, I'll wait 3 weeks to buy it. That saves me money.
If I am Circuit City, I want a lot of people in category 1, I am neutral (with a slight positive bias) toward the people in category 2, and I am being robbed by the people in category 3. The cheap category 3 people have used insider information (obtained illegally, in all likelihood) to give me less money than I would have received otherwise, considering I would have sold them a PS3 at $500 2 weeks ago, but they are now buying the same PS3 for $400. I still paid the same for that particular PS3 (barring any rebates Sony may or may not give retailers for the price change), plus I carried the cost of holding it in my inventory for 2 weeks longer than I originally would have if not for the leak.
It's only logical for a retailer to try to stop this, and they are using the means set up for exactly this reason by the United States justice system. If you replace "PS3" with "Stock in Company X", it's called insider trading, and it is very much illegal, not to mention immoral and unethical.
There are several breed-specific and general rescue organizations that will foster and adopt-out "special needs" animals, as well as "healthy" animals. My particular favorite is the Guardian Angel Basset Rescue (http://www.bassetrescue.org) which features pages of special needs animals (http://www.bassetrescue.org/homeless/index.htm) for adoption. Or you can go to Pets with Disabilities (http://www.petswithdisabilities.org), which has an adoption program as well.
As an independent, I say we take a huge chunk of the wealth to buy unions to drop on bombs, and welfare queens for all the brown people.
Amen. Also, gp assumes that we have one brain working to build an artificial brain, but that's not the case. Even if I agreed with the stipulation that a mind can only build something less complex than itself (which I don't), you have to take into account the "networking" of several minds, and the fact that our minds are able to imagine and conceive of things outside the current realm of reality. The fact that we are discussing whether or not we can create an intelligence equal to (or greater than) our own is, to me, a pretty convincing argument that we just might be able to.
Actually, took about 20 minutes. 19 minutes trying to figure out why the PCs kept blue-screening on boot-up, 45 seconds to actually boot once they figured it out, 10 seconds to cancel the Internet Setup Wizard when they tried to get online, and 5 seconds of online time before the 0wnage began.
Microsoft... If it can't boot, they can't hack it. Security through sheer crappiness.
So we'll spam the users to educate them about spamming! It's brilliant!
And while they're learning, maybe they'd like to think about purchasing my proven system for getting wealthy with little money and no risk, or look at the latest low re-financing rates.
I didn't see it mentioned before, but you will definitely want to bring a good Deet-based mosquito repellent. Mosquitos are always bad in that area of the country, but with all the additional standing water they'll be much worse. This is not merely a convenience item, either. West Nile is pretty big down there, and you don't want to come down with that (or worse) for your philanthropic efforts. Might also want to take some citronella candles and such for when you're sitting around at night.
Also, when you're working, make sure you wear jeans, long socks, long sleeve shirts, and a good set of work boots (steel toed, preferably). There are going to be a lot of deer ticks in the areas you're in, and you don't want Lyme's either.
Take a good sunblock (and plenty of it), and wear a hat with a brim, to keep the sun-effects down. And make sure you drink lots of water. It's hard enough to do the work you're going to be doing without adding a 3rd degree sun burn and/or heat stroke to the mix.
For tools, there are plenty of good lists above, and the tools depend on the job you're going to do. Good general tools are crowbars, shovels, hammers, chainsaws (with gas), a sawzall, sledge hammers or wrecking hammers,
For gear, bring sturdy jeans and long-sleeve work shirts, plenty of dry socks (you will definitely want to get out of the nasty sweaty ones pretty often) thick leather gloves, good steel-toed work boots, safety goggles (preferably the sunglasses type) and a good backpack, rucksack or workman's belt to hold the gear. Make sure you put a good, comfortable insole in the boots, to keep down blisters, and add some blister balm or heel balm every now and again. You'll also need to bring along a really well stocked first aid kit, since a lot of the people doing the work will be untrained. Band-aids, gauze, disinfectant pads, antibacterial creams, burn cream, aloe, blister cream/ointment, tweezers (lots of splinters), latex (or latex-free) gloves, splints/slings/braces, etc... Also, have everyone carry their ID with them, and a card or something with their name, any medical conditions or allergies, contact information for emergencies, their primary care physician's information and such, just in case. A good place for that is http://www.incaseofemergency.com./
As for what the people down there will be needing, your time and assistance are probably the best thing you can give. Outside of that, they'll need the basic daily necessities: food, clean water, medical/first-aid supplies, diapers, baby formula, etc... Just remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when you're thinking about what to take for the victims. Fulfill the physiological needs first (food, water, etc...), then you can work on the others.
Kudos to you and others like you who are doing their part to help. Good luck down there, and let us know how it goes.
Actually, most episodes of shows like Law & Order: SVU and others, get the "TV-MA" rating (at least here in the States), which is essentially the same as the "R" rating for movies.
All the "R" means is that people under 17 can't watch the movie unless an adult is with them (ostensibly giving them permission, as a responsible adult, to view the content in question). The same theory is supposed to hold true with television, that if you don't want your kids watching "TV-MA" content, you either monitor and control what they watch, or you get something like the V-Chip.
Also, the ratings system in the USA (whether right or wrong, I'm not saying), places more emphasis on visible actions than on words. Law & Order talks about the violent crimes, without actually showing them, while movies will actually show the violence and such, therefore the higher ratings.
Although I would actually like to see a nice hour-long drama solely about mid-level engineers at a software company:
"Dammit man, you've got a segmentation fault! Watch your pointer arithmetic!"
"Don't shout at me! I just had a really bad performance review!"
[ Fade to 45 minutes of lead character reading
The largest part of the cost does not come from recovering the data (although that will be costly), it is from the cost to actually analyze the data and perform any necessary calculations. Despite the current economic conditions, PhD's don't work cheap, at least, not the ones with the required skill sets for this analysis. Additionally, the storage cost is going to be a bit in and of itself. I am not sure of the density and capacity of the tapes NASA used, but 15 years worth of every useful piece of data (observations, navigation, status, etc...) has got to be a lot. Just "ripping it to a hard drive" would require a bit of hard drive space, and would be a bit useless, since they would just be moving it from one aging magnetic media to a slightly newer magnetic media. They are probably hoping to either move the data to some sort of optical storage, or read it directly from the tapes.
Phobos will indeed likely be dead, since it is far too small to hold an atmosphere of any substance, but that's not the point of the mission. Since Phobos is so small (and hence, has much lighter gravity) it is much easier to land on and take off from than the main planetary body. The escape velocity on Phobos is in the neighborhood of .01 km/s, compared to Earth's +/- 11 km/s at the equator. As such, it provides a decent staging base for missions to the planet itself. Also, much attention has been paid to Mars, and relatively little to its sattelites, so it would be a chance for some interesting science.
Additionally, as others have stated, the currently accepted theory for the formation of Earth's moon is that, while the Earth was still hot (i.e., mostly molten), a rather large object smacked the crap out of it (that's a technical term) and made it spit out a ball of really hot stuff that took up orbit around Earth and cooled (faster than the Earth, due to it's size) into Luna. However, Phobos does not seem to have been formed in this way. Phobos is a rather oblong shaped object, unlike objects that coalesce from space debris, which tend to be spherical. The prevailing theory on Phobos is that it is a captured asteroid, likely a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, which gives us additional scientific reason to go there.
Yes, it would become acceptable to carry the PSP at work in that case. However, that is entirely dependent on the fact that there is decent PIM software for it becoming general knowledge, outside of the geek sector. Even then, I'd still prefer a traditional PDA. I can't see myself using a D-pad (or a keyboard either, for that matter) to select a date from a calendar, which is muy importante in PIM software.
Don't get me wrong, I love my PSP, but I don't think it will ever replace my PDA. Especially since everyone at work already figures I'm playing games on my PDA, what would they think if I whipped out the PSP?
Don't know if the software has been ported or not, but the PSP wouldn't really be a very attractive PDA option, since it has no touch screen.
Saw the play in Chicago, before it started it's broadway run, and I have to agree about Hank Azaria. In the scene where the Knights Who Say Ni are no longer the Knights Who Say Ni, he was fantastic. Even threw in a bit of Moe when he described what they now said.
We were lucky, since it was the last performance before heading to New York. Eric Idle actually showed up and did a few lines as the narrator, before being run off stage by the actor who was actually narrating. Not sure if that was in the rest of the performances, but I enjoyed it.
Basically, SCO, Maureen O'Gara, et. al. can't attack Groklaw because everything they present (with the exception of the legal commentary, often provided by professional lawyers) is court record, and therefore not subject to criticism. Groklaw points out the documents, and provides a layman's translation of the documents, but doesn't make any claims as to the validity of claims or evidence contained therein.
So, if you can't attack your opponent's position, you attack him or her directly. It happens all the time in the political arena (if you vote for my opponent, you will be voting for a convicted puppy-kicker), as well as the legal arena (character witnesses and credibility attacks, anyone?), and often in the journalistic world (hell, that's basically what journalism is these days), so it was just a matter of time before the mud was slung over the technical fence.
What's really fantastic is, in the O'Gara "article" under discussion, the only way she backs up her implication that PJ is an IBM lackey is by pointing out that she lives in "IBM Territory". So, I'm sure, do hundreds of thousands of others. Is everyone in this area an IBM stooge, O'Gara? Then, MOG goes on to attack the woman's religion, for crying out loud! So she holds a religious belief you yourself don't subscribe to. Big deal. You know, SCO is located in Utah, and they have lots of Mormons there, maybe Darl & Co. are a bunch of Latter Day Saints stooges and kooks.
Everyone, open your eyes! It's so obvious that the Mormon Church, Brigham Young University and the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee are behind the SCO actions!
Nah, it's a volunteer position, no real power and no pay. The guy probably isn't even allowed to ban MAC addresses (I'd bet), and any policy he comes up with is probably just going to be taken as a "suggestion" by the unwashed masses. If possible, try to come up with a system for re-establishing connections that conveniently "forgets" chronic offenders. If they can't get their daily dose of SWG (or whatever the kids are playing these days), they'll come into line soon enough. Make network problems their problem. If you've got a machine that's ghost pinging away, throttle them down at the switch, or "accidentally" block their IP at the firewall. If you get really frustrated, try making it fun for yourself. I mean, you've got a pretty good idea of whose machines are vulnerable, right? I'm sure you can find some creative way to relieve your stress with a list of vulnerable IPs and open ports. Not that I'm advocating any illegal or unethical activity or anything. *wink wink*
OK, just so you know where I stand, I am by no means a "fundamentalist" or a "neo-conservative" or a "right-wing nut" or any of that. I am personally of the belief that whatever religious beliefs (or lack thereof) you happen to hold are your own damn business, and don't, in my eyes, make a bit of difference regarding your value as a human being. I am staunchly against the preference of one religion over any other in government and business, and think the government should keep its nose out of that particular arena. However, without RTFA (and IANAL, and all that), I can say that I don't think this Intelligent Design teaching strictly violates the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. The Constitution merely states that the government cannot give preference to one religion over another. In this case, the school is simply teaching a spiritual subject. It's not even a Judeo-Christian topic, since Intelligent Design does not strictly mean the Biblical God, or even technically a God at all, was involved in the design process.
Now, as to Intelligent Design being a "viable alternative" to the "flawed" theory of evolution, I do disagree with that. I don't believe the theory of evolution to be flawed, just incomplete (as most theories are). I also don't see how a state institution can feel that Intelligent Design is a viable alternative. Next thing you know, we'll be teaching how the moon landings were faked by the space aliens that assassinated Kennedy and replaced Richard Nixon with a clone/cyborg hybrid bent on world domination. Or something.
I'm sure there are those who will disagree, which is fine, and I'm sure if I RTFA I'll see that they are specifying some sort of Christianity-based version of the topic, but I don't care. In short, the school board needs to wise up, and the ACLU needs to chill out and re-read the Constitution.
Bah, who needs COMDEX to get strange strains of viruses? I'll get mine over the Internet, thank you very much!
It's useless as a defense, but not useless when giving mitigating circumstances. In essence, it won't help when determining the verdict, but it should be considered when determining the sentence.
"Somebody tell me I can't think on my own."
OK, you can't think on your own.
Oh, maybe you meant "Somebody tell me, I can't think on my own." In that case, you're hosed either way. You either hate it and get the fanboys all riled up, or you love it and get the anti-fanboys steamed. Or you could do what I do: "I'm sorry, I am not prepared to make a statement either way at this time. However, I will support the right of all involved parties to their particular point of view."
Nice and noncommittal.