Just had a cool/dumb idea: could you steer it slightly using the same paint-one-side technique they talk about for asteroids? Drop black dust on one side and it will melt faster in the sun due to lower albedo, then that side will release more fresh water and lose mass faster.

I know just enough physics to know that I haven't got a clue what the practical result would be if you did that. Obviously the effect would be very small compared to ocean currents, but it might be enough of a nudge to reduce the risk to shipping which could be very profitable for some groups.

If you think a cosmopolitan is a soft option, you're not drinking the right cosmopolitans

When there was concern about the condition of the ozone layer, we ignored the obvious causes in favor of reducing hair spray and refrigerant.

What do you mean by this? As I understand it hair spray and refrigerant were the obvious causes, and having replaced the CFCs with marginally more expensive substitutes the ozone layer is now on the long slow road to recovery.

Hi, I'm a Mac.

And I'm a...

On the one hand I agree with you; on the other hand I've bought great games for the same cost as my daily commute to work. At that price I don't care if I don't Really Own it.

Briefly (and wrongly, but it will do for a slashdot reply), NP complete problems require the computer to actually calculate all of the possible solutions and see which one is best rather than than using an algorithmic shortcut. For every extra item that has to be computed the complexity increases by quite a large amount relative to the difficulty of the smaller problem. The traveling salesman problem is the classic example - adding another town to visit means you have to recalculate all the routes because there just might be a better solution using the new town in any part of the route.

Anyway, there's nothing impossible about NP complete problems - the issue is that they get very hard very quickly as you make the problem space bigger. Quickly the time required to find the best solution (not just a good one) would take longer than the remaining lifetime of the universe.

One of the tricks with NP complete problems is that if you're looking for a merely good solution, not the absolute best, humans can often use some heuristic tricks to home in on a good solution quickly while a dumb computer algorithm would still be chugging away looking exhaustively for the best solution. Studying the kinds of guesses that humans make in these situations is a notable area of study in artificial intelligence.

In summary, a computer will kick you ass at minesweeper, but it still won't be able to solve a 10^14 x 10^14 board before the end of time.

What's the problem with that? It just means the search space is comprised of some possible terrain with opportunity cost values instead of a fixed grid with straightforward build or movement cost values. Have you thought about this problem more or less than me?

They're not used as police boxes any more, but a fair few of them are used for coffee stands, which is what you can see on google images.

Shoddy writing, bad analogies, this is an embarrassment.

Embarrassment? THIS! IS! SLASHDOT!

If I remember correctly, things are described as one orbiting the other when that shared centre of mass is inside the surface of one of the bodies.

Having looked this up previously, I can tell you the term you're looking for is barycenter and the barycenter of the sun/Jupiter system is slightly outside the sun. Google search is left as an exercise for the reader.

The original humans reached Australia when the sea levels were significantly lower, and while you're right that you couldn't just walk it, there may have only been a single crossing of ~90km between southeast asia and the Australia-ish landmass. Wiki

His code didn't expect two girls and one bucket

Presumably she's implying that she has more balls than the people insisting on absolute safety. /explaining the joke

Quick toppost poll; I see a lot of comments here about people getting beaten up in school. Most posters seem to be talking about America. I'm from New Zealand and while there is of course bullying/harassment I wasn't aware of physical violence against anyone to a level of obvious injury or robbery.

Is physical violence actually common in American schools? How about other countries?

Sorry to nitpick, but the primary requirement for a PhD is to contribute something original and of value to your field, whereas lower degrees such as a Master's only require you to demonstrate a high level of skill. I like to remember that when I come across somebody with a Doctorate; taken apart from their other achievements it's not much more or less than a certificate saying that they did something original and useful at least once in their lives.

That's either damn cool or practically irrelevant depending on the situation.