Comment missing option... (Score 1) 111
i can juggle one object.
Comment name for the new chocolate (Score 1) 161
call it soylent brown.
Comment jackass department (Score 1) 164
i wonder how many people will deep fry a frozen turkey on purpose just to see the explosion.
and for good measure, drop a pumpkin or two in the deep fryer, also just to see what happens.
Comment what if h1-b visas were auctioned? (Score 1) 795
as i understand it, h1-b visas are distributed by lottery, but are otherwise free.
but what if h1-b visas were auctioned? so those companies that wanted them had to bid for them pay a fee, say several thousand $ for each visa. companies complaining that they can't get enough tech employee visas could then be told to bid up the price and they could get al the visas they want. those that insist on using the visas for cheap tech labor will basically be forced to use the labor market.
it might suck for the workers on the h1-b visas who will see their wages reduced to pay for the visa.
i welcome people to speculate on how an auction for h1-b visas may affect the tech labor market and how companies use the h1-b visas.
also, if an auction is a viable option, should the auction be open or should it be through sealed bids? how should the auction be run?
Comment Hundred-Million Degrees? (Score 3, Funny) 74
is that Fahrenheit or Celsius?
Comment but what about the DHMO controversy? (Score 1) 866
considering that there are people in this country who think that dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.netreach.net/~rjones/no_dhmo.html) is a toxic chemical that needs to be regulated and that carbon dioxide (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ) is an all natural substance that is desirable to have around, i think a semester or two of chemistry may be a pretty good idea.
Comment light grenade (Score 1) 405
i think i might pick up a light grenade. 'cause i like to pick things up and it looks like a painless way to go.
Comment Re:So let's see (Score 1) 154
you can also effectively shield against microwaves with the wire mesh cut out from a screen door.
Comment lots of missing robots... (Score 5, Interesting) 608
six of one (tripping the rift)
johnny five (short circuit)
a tatchikoma (ghost in the shell)
and that little robot boy from A. I.
Comment books by norman spinrad (Score 2) 1244
i liked child of fortune and little heroes. star trek fans ought to note that he also wrote the episode 'wolf in the fold'.
spinrad's novels are generally set in decadent societies and feature lots of drug use.
Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411
SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"
Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes 101
Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."
NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."
Court Says Fair Use May Hold In Some RIAA Cases 145
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston RIAA case in which the defendant, represented by Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, admitted liability at his trial, the Court has entered judgment in favor of the RIAA for the monetary award of $625,000 fixed by the jury. However, the Court left open the questions of whether the amount is excessive, and whether attorneys fees and/or sanctions should be awarded, and has scheduled further briefing of those issues. The Court granted the RIAA much, but not all, of the injunctive relief it requested. In an unusual step, the Court issued a 38-page decision (PDF) explaining in some detail the Court's views of the Fair Use defense in the context of cases like this, and indicating that there are some factual scenarios — not applicable in this particular case — in which it might have concluded that the claims were barred by Fair Use. E.g. it declined to rule out the possibility that creation of mp3 files exclusively for space-shifting purposes from audio CDs a defendant had previously purchased might constitute fair use."
Comment germany? go figure... (Score 1) 472
i'd have thought gold vending machines would've hit japan first
they sell everything in vending machines in japan.
