So we drop the cargo down with a sky crane/inflatable combination/retro rocket system then land the crew with something like the LEM.

It's not like we don't have experience landing small, rocket-powred craft on airless low-gravity environments, and that was 40 years ago.

We put Curiosity down onto the surface intact using a sky crane flown remotely (with automatic systems handling key bits due to time delay). It's not like we can't land car-sized objects on Mars already.

But no, that sort of "we can't possibly do it" thinking is exactly what we need in space exploration. Keep it up.

Gravity is also only 40% of Earth's on average, which helps to negate some of those downsides.

Do you really think the problem in 1984 was the telescreens?

Telescreens are "an enabling technology". I see no reason to leave them, and thus any hypothetical government-or-other spy, enabled in my personal space.

I think most of us geeks grew up terrified of the very idea of the Orwellian Telescreen. However, it's not the technology that's evil (many of us have plenty of devices with a camera integrated with a display), but the threat of its use without consent.

My latest laptop came with a built-in, user-facing camera.

I immediately put a piece of opaque electrica tape over it - even before swapping out the hard disk for a fresh one and installing Linux.

The tape isn't coming off until I have a removable shutter to take its place.

Doesn't seem to have hurt Samsung, who were caught bait and switching by faking smartphone benchmarks.

This will be quietly forgotten.

if you bring back the passenger pigeon in some sort of wildlife preserve and they outgrow their food supply, how are you going to get the flock out of there?

You DO know that they fly, don't you?

Like in flocks of millions over continental distances?

You are correct - I read this earlier and had taken that Ikea asked her before to remove the ads, but I didm;t read it carefully enough it seems, since it was during lunch.

I was incorrect.

Yeah, I went back and re-read the article on Ars, which I seem to have misremembered - it pretty much says what the slashdot summary says.

I had taken from the Ars piece that they had asked her previously to remove the adverts, but it seems I was incorrect. I read it during luck and I guess I didn't give it enough attention.

Yes, so I see after re-reading it. I could have sworn the original stated that they asked her to take the ads down before, but I guess not.

Like a man in orthopaedic shoes, I stand corrected.

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I read this on Ars earlier in the day. The site has been up for eight years, and the C&D came recently, since the owner didn't want to take down the Ikea-style branding or the ads (Ikea said that it would be fine without the advertising if the owner ran the site as a non-commercial entity).

It's classic trademark/trade dress infringement, that has been either flying under the radar or simply hasn't been a concern to Ikea until recently - perhaps the ads being served alongside what could be confused for their branding changed, or maybe a new guy is in charge of legal over there now?

Who knows.

Tell that to the guy in a parallel thread to this one who thinks that because "any standard that doesn't include Linux is not a standard" and that because he doesn't think that the Open Group deserves to control what is and isn't Unix that he is taking the term for himself and declaring that it means whatever he wants it to mean.

"Thuggish" is trying to work it out with these guys for 8 years before finally taking them to court?

Man, the thugs in your neighbourhood must be really polite.

They spent eight years trying to convince the site to use something that didn't infringe IKEA's trademark, and only after all that did they finally decide to actually use the courts.

So, maybe waiting 8 years and trying to work it out with these guys without suing them was the boneheaded move?