Eh, they could just have a red light that turns on when it's about to fire and some crap to sign when they hire you. And paperweights, of course.

You're right. We should find all those ignorant, warlike motherfuckers and kill them.

Instead of a two kilometer tall office building they should build a two kilometer tall railgun. Then design a super aerodynamic, heat-shielded carrier with a late-firing chemical rocket for satellites and spacecraft payloads that can be launched from the rail gun. If there were stability issues (could be tied down with cables, I suppose, like a radio tower) they could build half of it underground, though I don't know how much momentum they'd lose from having to travel the extra distance.

The problem is that while trying to survive and maintain some kind of social normalcy most people don't take an active role in shaping their local/regional/national/world topology until men in black are infiltrating their home at night and killing/disappearing them and/or raping their wife while their children watch. Complacency lies in the middle, and we're ("civilized" countries) still in the middle. The middle's that slippery slope between the crest and trough of utopia and North Korea. Hopefully the EFF will have some success before momentum takes us to that dark point where we have no choice but to answer with drastic measures. Ironically, the goal of both sides is peace and order. I suppose the difference in opinion about the road to said peace and order is what puts us at such unenviable odds.

Cool, I didn't know that. Seems like the U.S. is behind the times when it comes to that sort of thing (giving women the right to vote for example). At least we have the middle east to make us feel better. Those guys seriously need to get their shit together.

I've seen every Star Trek episode and film in order with the exception of TOS which I watched last in an epic and sadly final marathon. Sci-fi has moved on, but Star Trek deserves a place in our hearts that will be difficult to fill again. It was the first serious sci-fi drama on television and has more episodes and films than any normal human being would dare to watch. Star Trek began dying, or should I say everyone began moving on, right around the time TNG was ending and DS9 was beginning. Voyager was its gasps for air and Enterprise its final throes. Battlestar Galactica put the last nail in the coffin, making people realize just how different (and equally if not more excellent) a sci-fi television show could be. The two JJ films succeeded because they had a recognizable name and were simple action flicks.

So Star Trek is dead. Everyone has moved on. That being said, let those who deeply love Star Trek for everything it has given us have a little fun with Star Trek Continues. They're not hurting anyone. Unless they violate the Prime Directive. Is it getting hot in here? Report! Compensate. Check the relays and coils and all that shit. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

That some people today are insistent about the use of gender-agnostic nouns doesn't mean that those using lesser-so nouns in the past were bigots. I highly doubt TOS's use of the word "man" was meant as a slight toward women considering Roddenberry's vision and the fact that it was the first television program showing a white and black person kissing. The entire premise of Star Trek Continues is that it's a continuation of the original series, which used the word "man", so I doubt they intended it to be a slight or exclusionary either. I despise bigotry, but people gotta loosen up a bit. If I say to my kid, "Hey, it's the mailman!" and then realize it's a woman driving I'm not going to start calling them the "mail person" and flog myself for being a misogynist. Language is fluid and its primary purpose is to get the point across. I wonder how many people when they heard the "where no man has gone before" bit thought, "Those sexist bastards! They specifically chose to use the word 'man' instead of 'one' because they're sexist pigs!" I mean, really? I hope someday people will realize that bigotry and choice of words are two very different things and that it's the intent and meaning of language that should cause offense, not an individual word in a sentence.

http://gambas.sourceforge.net/...

http://gambaswiki.org/wiki?l=e...

I think my first hard drive stored something ridiculous like 10 MB. The old ones don't sound like the new ones. Much louder, beefier and slower; they really gave the computer life. I miss the sound of my old Amstrad.

Stranger in a Strange Land is the only book by Heinlein I've read; it was awesome. I'm thinking Jim Carrey would do well as Valentine. He's great at pulling off "strange" roles (whoops) and is a damn good actor. It's a fish-out-of-water story that serves as a mirror to human nature with an inevitably dark ending. I can already see Jim at the bottom of a swimming pool. Can someone please make that?

So you can play Duke Nuk'em quotes on cue.

Have a "The Future" exhibit, a three-room 1:1000-scale model of cities, parks and suburbs showing what a full-scale nuclear war by major powers would look like. The first room would be pre-war, the second as it was happening, and the third what it would look like 100 years later. It that doesn't sober people up then only the real thing will.

It sometimes helps to play by the Devil's rules. You can't fight without getting dirty or win wars with smiles and flowers.

Keep telling yourself that as you scratch off the days, months and years on the walls of your prison cell while imagining the guffawing of Sony suits snorting cocaine off prostitutes' asses like Doogie Howser and rolling around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck. Sony does what it likes, and if anyone disagrees they get beaten with socks filled with 100 dollar bill stacks until they shut up. Don't believe the fairy tale of equal justice under law.

If /. ever gets unicode support it may be possible to obscure bad grammar with lens flare glyphs. I wouldn't hold my breathe.