That's only the case if you want to go into a controlled orbit very close to the sun. But we don't want to do that.

To crash something into the sun, we'd be happy with any orbit which is elliptical enough such that the perihelion is inside the sun's radius. We don't care what velocity we have at that point, even if it's theoretically high enough to send us back out to the orbit of Earth (or even Neptune) on the other side of the orbit, because the act of hitting the surface of the sun will remove any problems there.

So, we don't actually need to change our speed very much. We "just" need to change direction. Or any combination of direction and speed which gets us within 1 solar radius somehow. As another commenter has noted, we can use slingshots off other bodies in the solar system to change our delta-v in a large number of ways. We should be find a suitable slingshot *somewhere* to get us on a suitable orbit for impacting the sun without needing too much extra propellant.

Stop cherry-picking your dates and look at the longer-term trend.

Part 1, Part 2.

See also Scroogled by Cory Doctorow (translations)

Wow, Microsoft appropriating the name of someone else's pre-existing work in a particular domain, particularly when that domain is the criticism and commentary on a near-monopolist, and the original author is one of the most vocal and prominent proponents of copyright and other IP-related reform. I think my irony meter just exploded.

Are you seriously implying that "real journalists" (i.e. those employed by a corporate news organisation) would never spread misinformation while claiming to be reporting facts?

Maybe once the market share gets low enough, these asshats can just don some thick-rimmed glasses and claim to be hipsters using thier BBs ironically.

*eyeroll*

Still not fixed. If the US has X guns/capita, and France has (X - 2.5X) guns/capita, then France has -1.5X guns/captia (i.e. negative guns/capita) which is clearly absurd.

If the US has 2.5 times more guns per capita than France, that does not mean that France has 2.5 times fewer than the US, it means that France has 72% fewer, or 0.7 times fewer.

(On the other hand, if the US has 2.5 times as many guns per capita than France, then France has 60% fewer, or 0.6 times fewer.)

If Y is 100% more than X, it does not mean that X is 100% less than Y, it is 50% less than Y. In the first instance, you're measuring % of X, and in the other you're measuring % of Y. As X and Y are different, N% of X and Y are different, even for the same N.

How are they going to install a security update to your kernel, or to the security update system, if they don't have the ability to run arbitrary code as root?

Well, we had it tough.

cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6

(via bash.org)

So, what you're saying is, it's all three. Congratulations on writing many paragraphs without summarising the answer I was actually seeking. :-p

I realise that it's the possessive case of shit, but are we really talking about ownership? Does someone who "knows their shit" - i.e. is particularly knowledgable in an area of expertise - own their metaphorical fæces? Is knowledge something that can be owned? Seems like we're stretching the language to the point where it might actually sprain.

I also dispute your assertion that the apostrophe could be avoided while retaining meaning. "Knowing youre shit" is nonsensical, as "youre" is not a word. You have to parse it as either "you're" or "your", and the one that you choose dramatically changes the meaning of the sentence, as the pun demonstrates.

FWIW, the pun also works in my particular dialect of English called, um, English. English English? Ah - British English. Where "you're" and "your" sound almost identical in all UK accents I can think of, including (I think) Received Pronunciation.

Is it punctuation, spelling, or grammar which is the difference between knowing your shit, and knowing you're shit?

I cannot type "text file editor" to Linux CLI and have it launch nano or similar or at least display what the currently installed text file editors are.

Really?

$ update-alternatives --list editor
/bin/ed
/bin/nano
/usr/bin/emacs23
/usr/bin/vim.gtk
/usr/bin/vim.tiny

$ update-alternatives --config editor

  There are 5 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).

    Selection Path Priority Status
    0 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 auto mode
    1 /bin/ed -100 manual mode
    2 /bin/nano 40 manual mode
    3 /usr/bin/emacs23 0 manual mode
    4 /usr/bin/vim.gtk 50 manual mode
* 5 /usr/bin/vim.tiny 10 manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
$ editor --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.3 (2010 Aug 15, compiled Jun 7 2012 00:28:35)
Included patches: 1-547
$

I have to do a Google search to translate between what I want to do and CLI (google "Linux how to extract tar.bz2",

Why not "man tar"?

The first set of options listed shows you that "-c" is for "create" and "-x" is for extract. "-v" is the same as for many linux programs: "verbose", so that's not even needed, and should be easy to remember if you do want it. You don't need "-z" for extracting compressed archives, tar (at least recent versions) will figure that out from the filename. It will also figure out which type of compression to use for archive creation based on the filename if you use "-a" (still listed on the first screen of the man page) so you don't need to remember each of the different compression options.

Last, "-f" is for specifying the filename of the archive you're working on, instead of using the default stdin/stdout. Arguably "tar" should always take a filename and allow "-" for stdin/stdout, but if that was changed now then far too many existing things would break. :-(

So, Extract File:
$ tar -x -f filename.tar.bz2

Create (Automatic compression) File:
$ tar -c -a -f filename.tar.bz2 file*

In fact, Newton did this himself.

I recall a story of some mathematical puzzle or hypothesis which had been unsolved by a number of mathematicians for many years. It was brought to Newton's attention, whereupon over the course of a few days (maybe a weekend?) he invented a new branch of mathematics and solved the puzzle. He published his results anonymously, but no-one was fooled and immediately (if somewhat resignedly) congratulated Newton on his genius (again).

Can't remember the hypothesis or the resulting branch of mathematics though.

English - An Indo-European language closely related to the Romance, Germanic, Greek, Nordic and Gaelic languages, with extra loan words from almost every other culture they've invaded or been invaded by over the last 1800-odd years. :-)

The award is not for "contributions to the recording industry", it's for "significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording."

Steve Jobs' contributions to the "recording industry" may well have been negative or damaging, but they have nothing to do with the field of recording. They were entirely to do with content distribution, which is totally different.

(IANA sound engineer, but I know a few...)

The big problem is that the QR code to a human being is nothing more than "that little square with a bunch of strange blocks in it."

Are you sure? Wanna try some Snow Crash?