I think strange, convulsive, politics could be a major component of this. Argentina in particular could have been on par with Western Europe if it wasn't for the poltiical insanity from the 1950s onward.

When they build tunnels for trains now, don't they use those giant boring machines that excavacte the tunnel and line it with concrete now? The machines I think are giant not because of the digging itself but because they're usually boring a tunnel big enough to run a parallel set of subway-sized cars through. Add in cathedral-sized chambers for regular stops and its easy to see why its so expensive.

What would happen if they scaled that same excavation technology down so that the tunnel was something like 2 meters in diamater for a miniature train capable of just carrying parcels? The trains could run on rubber wheels following the tunnel. The cars could be flatbeds that carry miniature containers which could be inserted and removed via basically elevator shafts that grabbed them from above, eliminating the need for significant excavations for stations.

Powering it would be another issue, but maybe they could be powered by battery packs swapped at container insertion points or some kind of induction power cable pulled through the tunnel.

I just read a history of the Mississippi before the Civil War and I seem to remember something about large bones being discovered in giant burial mounds found near the flood plain.

I think they also mentioned that before the Corps of Engineers "tamed" the Mississippi (ie, turned it into an navagation canal) the regular flooding and natural erosion of the wild river would periodically expose giant bones, although those I believe were attributed to dinosaurs.

Does it now support HDDs larger than 2 GB? I'm not even joking here.

Last time I heard (like 10 years ago or so) it was a theorists wet dream but basically unusable.

What's the state of things with Hurd nwo? Is it usefull already?
What are big steps Hurd still needs to take to be ready for prime time?
What are the plans? When are we there?

Please note: I have no problem replacing Unix with something better, like ome coolDMI thing where everything isn't a file but an object and the system is cleanly designed from top to bottom and back. Top notch but everything modifiable. But it has to be real-world usable and useful. Until then I'm sticking with *nix derivates such as OS X on Apple hardware or some x86 Linux like Debian or Ubuntu on ThinkPads.

Could someone give some enlightenment on this issue?

Wow, that is impressive. I doubt I'll ever see that much write intensive flash in one place. We added a flash tier to a seed install (dumb customer only bought a single 15k tier and wondered why performance sucked) and I can never get over how fucking outrageously expensive the flash tier costs. I think it was pushing $100k.

I'd wager that mid range flash like the Samsung 850 Pros are getting cheap enough that double parity, double hot spares and replacing disks regularly due to burnout is probably cheaper for nearly the same performance than buying write intensive flash for all but the most intensive applications.

It's too bad that inexpensive SAN controllers rely on such cheap processors and NICs. I think it's getting to the point where fairly dumb controllers and bulk prosumer ssds will outperform tiering controllers.

So you're saying that a dead 2 year old, who had already had half her brain removed and the other half was seriously damaged, and dunking that in liquid nitrogen with the hope that someday a new body could be built for her and she'd be perfectly normal again ... is a con?

Oh ... ya ... it is ...

I don't know how the fuck anyone falls for it. Really... Why would they think that even if their bodies were preserved that long, and the technology was invented to create what's missing, and repair all the damage done by the freezing process, that anyone would spend the 14 bazillion New Earth credits (or whatever currency there is in futureland) to bring some old fucker back?

In her case, the could have just saved a DNA sample. The story is clear about the condition her brain was in. Half was gone. The other half critically damaged.

I'd have to think that it would be questionable in futureland to resurrect a 20th century person, even if they were in pristine condition. Say 21 years old with much above average intelligence, who was taught everything that there is to know, with no medical issues, no trauma. Just frozen as-is without cellular damage. Why would anyone opt to wake them up? Just to ask "Hey, so what was life like in the 20th century?"

The whole cryogenics "industry" is a huge con.

If these people are religious in the least, they'd have to believe that the soul was trapped in that frozen body until it was awakened. If it wasn't, there would be no reason to reincarnate them. What if they picked the wrong part to freeze? Like, if the soul was really in the liver, or maybe in the spinal cord between C1 and C3. Oops, sorry, we cut that part off.

And if they aren't religious in the least, why bother? So they can wake up as a curiosity in the future? "Hi Cro-Magnon. Fire hot. We have spoken languages you don't understand. And try to wrap your mind around these three seashells. No more poison ivy toilet paper for you. No, don't hit females with a club to make them your mate/slave."

Heaven's Gate didn't commit suicide with poisoned beverages, they used phenobarbital, vodka, and plastic bags. You're thinking of the Jonestown cult.

Maybe they should have paid attention in kindergarten?

It's more fun to suggest they get a job. They either leave you alone or get uppity and provoke a confrontation that ends with them on the receiving end of pepper spray. Either way you win.

Repeat after me: "I'm sorry for the hassle officer, I was afraid he was going to hurt me."

It's a good question and I can't say why for any concrete reason other than the vibe I got from her personally and knowing her boyfriend.

She struck me as a pretty demure; she didn't give off any kind of a sexual vibe or even that she was especially outgoing or adventerous. I just didn't believe she had the personality type that would be at all likely to get drunk and have a one night stand, especially with a coworker and especially not cheating on her boyfriend.

I didn't get a "blow by blow" account of her experience, but the same kinds of personality traits made me believe that once she woke up with the guy pulling her pajamas off she probably just kind of laid there and let him do what he wanted.

I've only had one other woman tell me about being raped in detail and what she described was pretty much the same. A guy knocked on her door, forced his way in and the shock and the fear were so great that she basically just went limp and he raped her and left. It was literally over in under five minutes, including the minute ripping her clothes off and pulling up his own pants.

I'm guessing this is pretty common for many rape situations. The expectation of fighting and screaming is probably less realistic than just freezing from fear. There may also be some fear that if they struggle that the guy will beat the shit out of them and that the intercourse will be even more painful.

I think in this case it might well be gravity. We still haven't sufficiently solved the three body problem to the point where we can predict and hence establish stable orbits with perfection. And the sun is a mighty powerful third body where that hot marble is rolling.

But like most huge subjects, nearly all of it is really, really boring and only a tiny few bits are really interesting.

And you may rest assured that those interesting bits are the ones your prof will take while his students get to waste countless hours sieving through the boring stuff. Well, if astronomy is anything like archaeology, that is.

NASA's an agency of the Federal Government, which brought you the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. This is one of the reasons why you can't take Republicans seriously when they say Government is no good at anything. Could you come up with a backronym that good? I doubt it.

Rightly or wrongly, the police may be influenced by their familiarity with the criminal justice system and circumstances that were reported. So many rape accusations boil down to a he said/she said situation that would be impossible to get charged by a prosecutor, let alone result in a convicton in court.

A woman I used to know was raped by a coworker. The woman and her roommate were waitresses at a restaurant and bar. They had the company Christmas party at the restaurant and the rapist was one of the employees. Everyone had too much to drink and the rapist was too drunk to drive and asked if he could crash on their couch. They said sure. In the middle of the night, he crept into her room and raped her and left the apartment afterwards.

In the morning, she told her boyfriend who insisted she go to the police who were basically dismissive of the claim, not because they thought she was lying but because there was no way to conclusively prove it was rape. There were witnesses who saw the three of them (the woman who was raped, her roommate, and rapist) voluntarily leave together. All had been drinking. The apartment wasn't forcibly entered. The rape itself didn't involve enough violence that she had bruises, scarring or signs of a physical struggle.

The cops said they would bring him in for questioning but that unless he actually admitted raping her outright, what would almost certainly happen is that he would say that after they got back to the apartment she invited him into her room for sex and that he left afterwards and that the rape accusation was that she felt guilty because she had a boyfriend. And because there was no way to disprove this version of events, the prosecutor wouldn't even file charges. They also said the presence of the roommate would work against her, since he would claim that since her roommate didn't wake up she wasn't fighting or resisting.

Are the cops insensitive? Maybe, but what can they do when there's no evidence?

I believed her personally because I knew her fairly well, but if I think about it too long even I can start to enterain doubts. Why was there no physical struggle? Why didn't she yell and wake her roommate? If I was a cop confronted with this a lot, I can see why they come off indifferent.