Comment Re:I shouldn't be surprised (Score 4, Insightful) 489
Terrifying, isn't it?
Terrifying, isn't it?
13.75 +- 0.11 billion, according to the latest WMAP figures.
If I were ever to be convicted of some dreadful crime and sentenced to a long time in prison, you'd better believe I'd find Jesus. It plays well with the parole boards. I doubt I'd be the only one; that must skew the statistics pretty severely.
It's not quite that easy. You can't just point stuff at Earth, give it a shove and wait as it rolls downhill, because space being nearly frictionless, it will roll right back uphill on the other side and end up back in the asteroid belt again.
Your cargo is currently in a circular orbit between Jupiter and Mars. You have to brake it with one rocket burn to convert it to an elliptical orbit with its aphelion where you are now and its perihelion on the opposite side of the Sun at Earth's orbit - timed so that Earth is there when you arrive! Then when you get there, you're going far too fast - your course is going to loop you around straight back to the asteroid belt. So you've got to brake again to join Earth's circular orbit, which means yet more fuel to burn.
There is a very obvious way of stopping at Earth without carrying the fuel for a second rocket burn, but it isn't going to make you popular with the resident civilisation and might damage the cargo too. Also, you don't necessarily have to fly the basic Hohmann ellipse I described: you can go more slowly with a constant-low-thrust ion drive and play clever tricks with gravitational slingshots, which can get you there with far less reaction mass but will take FECKIN' YEARS. Might not be a problem for dumb cargos of ore. Or you can go there more quickly with a mighty superengine like an Orion or a nuclear salt rocket. Of course those are going to be only marginally more popular with the public than the 'look Ma, no brakes' plan of delivery.
Yes, that's a great idea. Let's all read about what some people claim actual Islam ought to be, as opposed to what a billion-plus people actually believe and practice in their daily lives. You know what? If 'actual Islam' has been 'permeated and corrupted' by something else, then 'actual Islam' is what we technically call 'extinct' and 'irrelevant'. What we're dealing with here is 'Islam' warts and all, not your idealised Islam you find in books by this Karen Armstrong of yours.
Sunshine wasn't great, and honestly I was a bit disappointed in Spirit Tracks. But what's this about Majora's Mask? That game was wonderful.
Er... can I have some of what you're smoking?
If this is actually necessary, try an infrared LED on the unit itself, and a detector that's watching for the reflection from the user's eyes. The whole point of the 3DS is that it's a 3D game that doesn't require the user to wear stupid glasses; you think that a Borg cosplay accessory is even remotely acceptable here?
... Well, for a few weeks anyway, since the last software update that activated Skype video calling. Unless I've overlooked something?
I don't honestly have much use for video calling either. Once you get over the whole OMG I'M LIVING IN TEH FUTURE thing, video phone is just kind of awkward. Give me a Thunderbirds-style SOUND ONLY SELECTED card to put up and I'll be happy.
$ acpi -i
Battery 0: Discharging, 43%, 01:49:04 remaining
Battery 0: design capacity 6580 mAh, last full capacity 6040 mAh = 91%
Ubuntu generally estimates a bit over four hours on a full charge, but I find it's normally good for five.
If anybody at Asus is reading this, you can chalk this one up as a satisfied customer. I suspect this computer might prove to be almost as durable as my 2003-era MP3 player which I am now convinced is some kind of electronic zombie which cannot be killed by natural means.
So to an immigrant family, having a child who can truly master this horrible mess is a sign that they've arrived, established themselves and put down roots. A point of great pride, a tremendous achievement. To the established population, the ability to spell is taken for granted and the ability to spell well is just a nice-to-have.
Alas, we don't have this custom in England. A pity, really. I was good at spellings at primary school, so it would have been fun. I remember I once got into a huge argument with the teacher over the spelling of a certain word for more than one very small person, because it meant I only got nine out of ten that week. She cited the dictionary; I cited The Hobbit. The mark stood
That's Wispa, and they brought it back last year. You even see Wispa Gold from time to time.
It's only if I want to make an encrypted call to somebody I've never met that a certificate is needed; and if encryption is an application with any significant market demand, how about a protocol where your phone comes preinstalled with the phone company's public key, you generate a key pair, send the public key to the phone company (securely, using their public key) and they sign it as part of the service? Then the phone company get a certificate for their public key, and anybody who wants to check my public key's authenticity can find a clear endorsement of it.
Yes, but what if you don't have a war going on? That would put a stop to this social engineering scheme. You'd have to start a war. Kill them over there, so we don't end up killing each other over here...
It is better to live rich than to die rich. -- Samuel Johnson