i would imagine the "missile" would contain gyroscopes so it can change orientation without using thrusters. For bonus points you could even make it look like a natural meteoroid, then when it gets close to its target it, it uses the gyroscopes to aim towards the target and can fire off a bunch of smaller projectiles designed to pierce the target's hull.

the radiation from thrusters is what is most likely to give you away, so this eliminates them entirely.

oops nevermind, guess i need my eyes checked. thought you had said take away their slashdot accounts.

That is just harsh, they will be mocked mercilessly when they have an 8 digit slashdot ID because you didn't let them signup for slashdot.

Seems the better edict would have been to have everyone change the color of their shirt.

"Hey these red shirts seem to anger aliens and make people clumsy, so lets start wearing green shirts instead!"

I don't know.

many Access project start like yours but then the business outgrows it, but then by the time you realize that you are then stuck with Access and have nowhere to go as it is doing all of your business logic and has turned into a monster.

  we originally moved everything to PHP and MYSQL, but have since converted most things to Java and MSSQL, with a little bit of C# here or there.

Our path probably isn't too helpful to you. i work for a university primarily developing internal applications. The majority of our decisions on what platforms to use are made based on what our slave labor (students workers) are capable of doing, so this is probably not necessarily what would work best for most businesses. The students may be cheap but they have extremely high turnover, as we can't keep them after they graduate. To be fair we do pay them and this is one of the highest paid student jobs available on campus. we have a short time to train them and get them productive before they leave, we have to work around their class schedules during the school year so we only get them part time, and considering they are still taking their CS classes they often know little to nothing when we get them. considering those limitations, i think we do quite well and the students that work for us get some valuable work experience that has helped them start their career after graduation.

I used to do Foxpro, it at least paid for my education. i would still pick it over MS Access on most days. we long ago converted everything out of foxpro and had never allowed anything that uses Access.

my favorite little side project that i had worked on in my free time was a sort of foxpro VM written in foxpro...yeah everyone thought i was crazy.

There is nothing wrong with them charging worldwide for their content, but using geolocation as your only means of authenticating whether the user has already paid is rather braindead.

the point i am trying to make is that it takes more than one scientist to be "right". science is about repeatability. it takes multiple scientists repeating an experiment to advance our knowledge. if no one can repeat it, then that original scientist must have been wrong. When you have multiple scientist repeat an experiment and come to the same conclusion isn't that a consensus?

also there are any number of reasons that others may not be willing or able to repeat an experiment. if the subject matter is too controversial or had major hoaxes which dried up funding, such as maybe cold fusion for example, then even if someone does find something it is possible no one would be willing to verify those experiments as they may either view it as a waste of time or just bad for their reputation to be associated with looking into something that is so controversial and everyone "KNOWS" is wrong. it took a long time for the stigma around cold fusion to die down enough that scientists would begin looking at it again without fear of it being a black mark on their careers. now i am not saying i believe in cold fusion, just that it is an example where controversy can stop other scientists from conducting research into that subject.

science is about repeatability. if only one investigator happens to be right, and no one else can repeat his experiment, then there will be no consensus even if he happens to be right. the prevailing hypothesis has stood the test of time and had multiple scientists repeat experiments to verify it, this is how the consensus forms.

Without a consensus most scientists will ignore it and go off to research something else, but then once in a while someone may come along and say "i wonder if this really is true?" and then they will run an experiment to try to confirm it. They will then either confirm it which reinforces the consensus, or will say hey these results don't fit, something is wrong here. they must then get other scientists on their side to repeat the experiment to confirm the results. if no one is interested in running those experiments then it doesn't really matter how right that scientist is, his discovery that the accepted hypothesis is wrong will be forgotten. and so consensus is very important to science

1) history shows that humans absolutely destroy anything that ever threatens us.

2) robots don't need oxygen to breath.

instead of trying to kill humans it is most likely that robots will just leave the earth. humans won't easily be able to chase them so then the robots can live on their own and mine some asteroid or moon for resources and not have to compete with humans.

if you are converting miles to 16ths of an inch you are doing something wrong.

really there isn't much need most of the time to convert between miles and inches or even feet and miles. the only real reason for that is to compress the number when you write it down. there is nothing stopping you from using deca-feet or kilo-feet.

typically when you are working in miles you aren't measuring down to the foot. so you would say something is 3.5 miles not 3 miles and 2640 feet or 3 miles and 880 yards.

the imperial system is designed around construction. using either feet or yards as our base unit for construction we can easily divide it into many different factors using inches. want something to be 1/3rd of a foot? easy that is 4 inches. now try doing that with metric.

really the imperial system (for distance) has multiple different measurement scales it just so happens that we designed them so we can easily scale between them. metric only has one. the meter with multiple prefixes we can attach to it. i will grant you that metric is far better for most scientific measurements. and when you get to relativistic speeds and stellar distances the imperial units mean nothing to me, i need to see it in metric to get a proper sense of scale.

now i am not by any means against metric, i just don't loath the imperial system.

however at relativistic speeds and stellar distances your precious metric system sort of breaks down. how many kilometers in a light year? you can use a calculator, and good luck. :P

*well i guess light year isn't really a metric unit but it is a commonly used scientific unit of measure, and does not easily convert to meters.

i agree with you.

how hard is it to put up a damn network? and then i don't have to put up with these bastard lizard pricks ruining everyones fun.

Too bad the venezuelan's don't have anyone to smuggle out...isn't he at the Ecuadorian embassy?

And I do...just trying to give a tip that some people may find useful

it's also generally not a good idea for your manager to think "damn it does he ever come to work?" if you wait until Monday morning to turn off the auto reply and he often sends emails before it gets turned off in the morning, he may see it and mistakenly think you still aren't there. turning it off Friday evening (assuming you took the previous week off) means 3 less days of advertising you are a no good slacker that is always on vacation...unless your manager typically expects you to respond to emails on the weekend, or prior to the time you arrive to the office in the morning,