One big problem with this approach is that ending characters on license plates will not be uniformly distributed. In California, for example, all non-vanity plates end in a number. In Nevada for the longest time they strictly ended with a letter. Now you have to consider that wherever Burning Man is held, the local license plate templates are going to dominate and your queues are going to clump accordingly.

I think before you can have credibility in submitting such an algorithm to them you really need to be on the ground directing traffic at the event. Then maybe you'll be able to see a solution they haven't thought of yet.

Player of Games is absolutely gripping. I think I read through it in like two days. Consider Phlebas took me well over a month off and on because...it's just such a downer really. Also in the absolutely gripping and coincidentally total Gen X/Y geekgasm fantasy literature is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I finished it in maybe a day and a half and could not put it down in any free moment that I had. And then I re-read it two weeks later and it had the same level of awesomeness. Really looking forward to his next book.

Don't be disingenuous. He means no deaths directly resulting from the exploration/habitation venture (habitat loss, equipment malfunction, starving to death, CO2 poisoning, cosmic radiation, etc). Obviously everyone eventually dies.

While I would love to see the Lensman series made into movies, it's got some major hurdles to overcome. Hollywood and steampunk so far have not gotten along (and the series is basically steampunk in space to modern sensibilities) - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow tanked, as did Sucker Punch. Then as it is written from a 1930's - 1940's perspective it is deeply misogynistic all throughout. Women are largely window dressings except for one major character who is ignored or used as a damsel in distress as much as possible. Also deeply ironic would be all the CGI required to pull off production of it when computers are mentioned a total of once in the series, and no character is seen using them.

æfter ic encan ealmæst hit eald Angelcynn beon betera

Amateurs...

You'd have to break it east-west. The coastal cities tend more toward liberal/progressive ideologies, the inland counties tend more strongly toward conservatism.

The argument made by the pro-life camp is that it isn't a right. In the pro-life worldview murder is not a right, therefore abortion is not a right. In the pro-choice worldview, abortion is not murder and therefore it is the reproductive right of women to exercise that option at their discretion.

If you do not understand your opponent, there can be no meeting of the minds and thus no meaningful discussion. The true debate to be had about abortion, and the only meaningful discussion possible, is the debate over when does life and its associated rights begin. If you believe that it begins at conception then the answer is self evident in any reasonable moral system - you must not take a life without just cause. If you believe that it begins at birth then the answer is self evident again - the rights of a woman over her own body are paramount. If you take a middle stance (say, capable of living outside of the womb or similar) then you necessarily oppose abortions after that specified cutoff point.

November 3, 2008 - Telegraph article reporting on an interview on MTV. You won't find anything similar from the 2012 campaign, but it does show a turn-around in his position. The time frame is similar as CA Prop 8 was on the ballot for that year, though Obama did voice his opposition to CA Prop 8.

No, no you're thinking about this wrong. It the same basic principle as what happens when two people push against each other with equal force - they both go nowhere. The energy involved in sound wave is very very low and essentially you're pushing down on the carrier medium (air molecules) at the same but directionally opposite pressure as the original sound wave. Now for high energy applications this can lead to highly interesting and destructive results (think head on car crashes, football linebackers smashing each other), but for audio cancellation it's negligible in effect. But you're right in the sense that the energy is not created or destroyed.

Now in this specific case it sounds like they're going more for a damper than an actual cancellation device (which would require ungodly amounts of energy to have an impact). That's seems a little more reasonable and potentially doable.

You know, if you want to go down that road we should examine the number of atoms in the universe (~1e80) and determine that a 1e200 solution needs to tap the multiverse for another 1e120 universes to dilute down to an effective mixture. See, physics just hasn't caught up to homeopathy yet, but the cure to all our ills is just a multiverse away!

Oh my god - EverQuest had the bazaar model figured out like 12 years ago! Central list where you look up who has what and at what prices then worst case you have to hunt around a little to find the exact trader. I heard that they started allowing offline traders over there a year or two back (finally). To see such a regression is..troubling. I mean surely some people on staff played a few other MMO's out there to see what worked well and what didn't?

Is this from the same group that gets all up in arms when Christians try to shove their beliefs down other people's throats? How is trying to change the beliefs and mores of the gaming community any different? You're still trying to change who they are to better suit you.

To neurosurgeons? A fair few I should imagine.

Okay, generally insightful and well put. But I need to point out that the Hague Convention prohibits hollow point bullets in warfare and as such they are certainly not military rounds. Also, vastly more rounds of ammo are expended in practice, training, and re-certification exams than will ever be shot at live targets. I would be surprised if DHS and all its agents used less than a billion rounds of ammo a year - 99+% of which would be shot at paper targets.

Don't use your work laptop for personal things at work. Simple, problem solved. Use your phone, tablet, personal computer+hotspot, whatever, just don't use company resources on company time to deal with personal things. Or if you do accept any possible consequences.