Comment Re:Xena (Score 1) 152
Xena was just a temporary suggestion for the name; since 13th September 2006 it's actually been called Eris.
and what are eris and dysnomia (its moon) if not lawless?
Comment Re:Marathon and the Halo Series (Score 1) 105
There's plenty of Marathon homages in the original Halo (haven't yet played 2 or 3 myself). First, look on Captain Keyes's uniform for the Marathon symbol at the game's starting adventure on the bridge.
similarly, look at the center of the original Halo logo, just between the 'A' and the 'L'--there it is again.
Comment Re:Colony Ship For Sale (Score 1) 105
everyone hated that level. the version of marathon one that works with Aleph One actually changed the jumping puzzle to be much easier. (only thing they did change, apart from adding a couple credits-type easter eggs.)
Obama Orders Federal Agencies To Digitize All Records 186
Lucas123 writes "President Obama this week issued a directive to all federal agencies to upgrade records management processes from paper-based systems that have been around since President Truman's administration to electronic records systems with Web 2.0 capabilities. Agencies have four months to come up with plans to improve their records keeping. Part of the directive is to have the National Archives and Records Administration store all long-term records and oversee electronic records management efforts in other agencies. Unfortunately, NARA doesn't have a stellar record itself (PDF) in rolling out electronic records projects. Earlier this year, due to cost overruns and project mismanagement, NARA announced it was ending a 10-year effort to create an electronic records archive."
Comment Re:It never ceases to amaze me... (Score 1) 87
I think with archaeologists, there was (and probably still is) a lingering hangover from the Middle Ages that severely warped their ability to value "traditional" sources (the Bible, classical mythology, etc.) seriously. Too many people wanted too strongly to prove they weren't taking "silly old myths" seriously....
Comment offset w/in zone (Score 1) 359
the interesting thing that actually affects (perception of) time wrt zones is the offset from the notional zone center (the 0=longitude mod 15 line) to where you live. i spent the first twenty-two years of my life on the eastern edge of eastern (durham & new york) and the eastern edge of central (western kentucky), and living on the western edge of eastern (louisville) during grad school was a very weird experience--dark till 7:30am in the winter, light till 9:30pm in the summer.
Comment six-character passwords considered harmful (Score 1) 77
why does anyone ship anything with a six-character password? why does any website allow them? eight is barely sufficient given recent gpu-based attacks, and i seriously doubt people who have trouble remembering eight characters have any less trouble with six.
Comment Re:My only problem... (Score 1) 147
basically how WoW works--you can buy extra shiny pets and mounts direct from blizzard, or gamble for others (and other vanity stuff) with the CCG, but nothing you pay for affects the actual game at all. (well, except possibly that it makes the pet and mount collection achievements somewhat easier.)
Comment Re:You need different kinds of people (Score 1) 487
see also Goodhart's law: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." and Campbell's law: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
Man Mines Midtown New York Sidewalks 183
43-year-old Raffi Stepanian makes money searching New York City streets, but it's not loose change or soda cans he's looking for, it's gold. Stepanian says he can make almost $1000 a week scouring the diamond district's streets for bits of gold, platinum, and precious gems. "Material falls off clothes, on the bottom of shoes, it drops off jewelry, and it falls in the dirt and sticks to the gum on the street. The percentage of gold out here on the street is greater than the amount of gold you would find in a mine . . . It comes close to a mother lode because in the street, you're picking up gold left by the industry," he says.
Comment Re:Now I am intrigued... (Score 1) 86
Note, we don't call it "carrot", as (yellow-red) carrots were developed in the 1700s.
and popularized as a symbol of dutch patriotism, iirc
Comment return of .hack (Score 1) 45
reminds me of the
Comment Marathon AIs (Score 1) 722
Not servers, but storage--on my old desktop, when I installed two internal expansion drives in addition to the original boot disk, I promptly named the three of them Leela, Durandal, and Tycho. My first external was S'buth. Durandal and S'both later merged to a fourth disk to make Thoth. My first thumb drive was MJOLNIR. The first external I got for my laptop was Cortana, and the new thumb drive was MASTERCHIEF.
The system's been superseded, unfortunately--I was given a leather-wrapped "flask" style external as a present once, so I named it Whisky. The two partitions on my other external of the same vintage naturally had to be called Tango and Foxtrot, and since I was out of ideas, the next five disks were simply Alpha thru Echo.
One of these days I'll merge all my current storage onto one or two 3TBs, and then I'll have to think up a new scheme.
I kinda like the elements, though I can never remember whether my guild's typefrag Ventrilo is on cadmium or calcium....
Comment Re:Grammar nitpick (Score 1) 146
this. you can always pluralize a mass noun (not a collective noun, that's something else) to refer to multiple kinds.
Comment Re:Incompetent key handling. No surprise. (Score 1) 146
i've met people who've been shocked at how quickly standard pin tumbler locks can be picked by an expert (i.e., as fast as you can open a slightly stuck lock with its own key).
if that's your level of understanding, you shouldn't be choosing the locks for a new building....
