Comment Re:I always thought... (Score 1) 65
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
Can You Buy a License To Speed In California? 325
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Alex Mayyasi reports that in the parking lots of Silicon Valley's venture capital firms, expensive cars gleam in the California sun and a closer look reveals that the cars share a mysterious detail: they nearly all have a custom license plate frame that reads, 'Member. 11-99 Foundation.' Are the Bay Area's wealthy all part of some sort of illuminati group that identifies each other by license plate instead of secret handshakes? The answer is the state highway patrol — the men and women that most people interact with only when getting ticketed for speeding. A number of the frames read 'CHP 11-99 Foundation,' which is the full name of a charitable organization that supports California Highway Patrol officers and their families in times of crisis. Donors receive one license plate as part of a $2,500 'Classic' level donation, or two as part of a bronze, silver, or gold level donation of $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. Rumor has it, according to Mayyasi, that the license plate frames come with a lucrative return on investment. As one member of a Mercedes-Benz owners community wrote online back in 2002: 'I have the ultimate speeding ticket solution. I paid $1800 for a lifetime membership into the 11-99 foundation. My only goal was to get the infamous 'get out of jail' free license plate frame.'
The 11-99 Foundation has sold license plate frames for most of its 32 year existence, and drivers have been aware of the potential benefits since at least the late 1990s. But attention to the issue in 2006-2008 led the foundation to stop giving out the frames. An article in the LA Times asked 'Can Drivers Buy CHP Leniency?' and began by describing a young man zipping around traffic — including a police cruiser — and telling the Times that he believed his 11-99 frames kept him from receiving a ticket. But the decision was almost irrelevant to another thriving market: the production and sale of fake 11-99 license plate frames. But wait — the CHP 11-99 Foundation also gives out membership cards to big donors. 'Unless you have the I.D. in hand when (not if) I stop you,' says one cop, 'no love will be shown.'"
The 11-99 Foundation has sold license plate frames for most of its 32 year existence, and drivers have been aware of the potential benefits since at least the late 1990s. But attention to the issue in 2006-2008 led the foundation to stop giving out the frames. An article in the LA Times asked 'Can Drivers Buy CHP Leniency?' and began by describing a young man zipping around traffic — including a police cruiser — and telling the Times that he believed his 11-99 frames kept him from receiving a ticket. But the decision was almost irrelevant to another thriving market: the production and sale of fake 11-99 license plate frames. But wait — the CHP 11-99 Foundation also gives out membership cards to big donors. 'Unless you have the I.D. in hand when (not if) I stop you,' says one cop, 'no love will be shown.'"
Comment Re:Yes... (Score 1) 126
The notes at the bottom said to use [URL: blah blah blah] to auto link a URL (angle brackets instead of square brackets). That's what I tried. I know standard HTML.....I just didn't try it.
Comment Re:Yes... (Score 4, Informative) 126
Sorry. I suck at Slashdot's markup.
Text version of the link (or autoformatted, whichever) http://picturedefense.blogspot...
Comment Re:Yes... (Score 4, Informative) 126
Here's another site that can help. They have templates for emails/letters and guidelines on how to approach the situation when you find your stuff in use elsewhere. ahref=http://picturedefense.blogspot.com/rel=url2html-27041http://picturedefense.blogspot...>
Comment Re:Fuck Obamacare (Score 1) 723
So....no preventative care, just reactionary care......even someone that seems fairly healthy can have untreated issues that early treatment can cure.
Comment Re:This is Fantastic! (Score 1) 99
Looks more like the Y U No guy (facing left, with his mouth open).
Comment Re:Yes, for any mission (Score 1) 307
The difference between "some of them will die" and "all of them will die" is drastic. The first implies that some of them have a reasonable chance of survival. The government provides the training and supplies such that potentially all of them could survive with a reasonable expectation is that some of them will survive. I'd be ok with a voluntary mission with similar chances. I would not be ok with a mission where the expectation is that noone would survive.
How Many People Does It Take To Colonize Another Star System? 392
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The nearest star systems — such as our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years from home — are so far away, reaching them would require a generational starship. Entire generations of people would be born, live, and die before the ship reached its destination. This brings up the question of how many people you need to send on a hypothetical interstellar mission to sustain sufficient genetic diversity. Anthropologist Cameron Smith has calculated how many people would be required to maintain genetic diversity and secure the success of the endeavor. William Gardner-O'Kearney helped Smith build the MATLAB simulations to calculate how many different scenarios would play out during interstellar travel and ran some simulations specially to show why the success of an interstellar mission depends crucially on the starting population size. Gardner-O'Kearny calculated each population's possible trajectory over 300 years, or 30 generations. Because there are a lot of random variables to consider, he calculated the trajectory of each population 10 times, then averaged the results.
A population of 150 people, proposed by John Moore in 2002, is not nearly high enough to maintain genetic variation. Over many generations, inbreeding leads to the loss of more than 80 percent of the original diversity found within the hypothetical gene. A population of 500 people would not be sufficient either, Smith says. "Five hundred people picked at random today from the human population would not probably represent all of human genetic diversity . . . If you're going to seed a planet for its entire future, you want to have as much genetic diversity as possible, because that diversity is your insurance policy for adaptation to new conditions." A starting population of 40,000 people maintains 100 percent of its variation, while the 10,000-person scenario stays relatively stable too. So, Smith concludes that a number between 10,000 and 40,000 is a pretty safe bet when it comes to preserving genetic variation. Luckily, tens of thousands of pioneers wouldn't have to be housed all in one starship. Spreading people out among multiple ships also spreads out the risk. Modular ships could dock together for trade and social gatherings, but travel separately so that disaster for one wouldn't spell disaster for all. 'With 10,000,' Smith says, 'you can set off with good amount of human genetic diversity, survive even a bad disease sweep, and arrive in numbers, perhaps, and diversity sufficient to make a good go at Humanity 2.0.'"
A population of 150 people, proposed by John Moore in 2002, is not nearly high enough to maintain genetic variation. Over many generations, inbreeding leads to the loss of more than 80 percent of the original diversity found within the hypothetical gene. A population of 500 people would not be sufficient either, Smith says. "Five hundred people picked at random today from the human population would not probably represent all of human genetic diversity . . . If you're going to seed a planet for its entire future, you want to have as much genetic diversity as possible, because that diversity is your insurance policy for adaptation to new conditions." A starting population of 40,000 people maintains 100 percent of its variation, while the 10,000-person scenario stays relatively stable too. So, Smith concludes that a number between 10,000 and 40,000 is a pretty safe bet when it comes to preserving genetic variation. Luckily, tens of thousands of pioneers wouldn't have to be housed all in one starship. Spreading people out among multiple ships also spreads out the risk. Modular ships could dock together for trade and social gatherings, but travel separately so that disaster for one wouldn't spell disaster for all. 'With 10,000,' Smith says, 'you can set off with good amount of human genetic diversity, survive even a bad disease sweep, and arrive in numbers, perhaps, and diversity sufficient to make a good go at Humanity 2.0.'"
Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 103
"Why do you want to run a SQL server that has NO SQL support??"
That was certainly my first question.
Comment Re:It's webscale! (Score 0) 103
But does it come in Mauve?
http://search.dilbert.com/comi...
Comment Re:Space travel (Score 1) 357
I thought everyone got 80 virgins......
Comment Kaiju (Score 1) 455
So which of these is Godzilla, and which is Gamera?
Comment Re:Asleep at the wheel. (Score 2) 150
The 7-11 I used to frequent had a ethernet jack near the soda dispensers......this jack was where the nearby ATM was plugged in. It would have been quite easy for me to insert any sort of device between the ATM and the jack. There was enough space between the jack and the ATM and there was also a valid reason for me to be in the area that it wouldn't look like I was doing anything with it. While it wasn't an official bank ATM (unaffiliated), I still could have been malicious had I wanted to. [I also never had a reason to use that ATM and am always wary of using an ATM that isn't physically at a bank...not that those are drastically safer.]
Comment Re:Headline misleading (Score 4, Interesting) 126
I offer as a solution not covered by the patent the following. This solution is released free of charge to any and all podcasters / podcasting software / podcast playback devices:
Create a REST based url which requires a random number to be passed as the final argument. Without this random (non-predetermined) argument, the compilation file (aka RSS or ATOM feed) will not be returned.
From the patent statement linked in the summary: The compilation file was stored at a predetermined URL known to the Personal Audio player and was updated as new episodes became available
