Not to mention melting due to aerodynamic heating:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cvYIHIgH-s

The story we heard from SpaceX is that due to the weather, they couldn't get a boat out in the 15-foot seas, and the NASA chase plane they usually use wasn't available, so they went up in Elon's private jet equipped with an antenna jerry-rigged from a pizza pan stuck in the window. Maybe next time they'll use a Pringles can instead. :D

One of the mpeg experts was lamenting the encoding - there was no error correction enabled in the MPEG encoding, and the images were interlaced from an NTSC 29.97 down to a 15-fps feed into the encoder, and interlacing crushes the compression ratio, I gather. They've been informed of this, so hopefully the next launch will see some rock-solid quality video.

The poor slobs now have to sell you health care EVEN IF YOU ALREADY HAVE AN EXPENSIVE CONDITION

Now why, why would any more or less healthy person who is not expecting a baby sign up for health care? Pay the small fine, it's cheaper. Pay out-of-pocket for the one or two times you need to see a doctor or get a flu shot this year. It's still cheaper.

And if you find out that you have cancer, a heart condition, or (like myself) a chronic condition like ulcerative colitis which is going to require tens of thousands of dollars' worth of health care every year to manage... well, THEN sign up, and get the Gold option, and laugh at the clueless corporate fucks in the insurance industry who thought that getting into bed with the government and forcing everyone to buy their product, would actually result in moar profit...

Sanctions? Hardly necessary. To bring the US to its knees, all that needs to happen is for the Chinese to stop buying US Treasury bonds. Whoops....

You say this,. but it was a post on Slashdot 10 years ago that led me to move to New Hampshire. Now I pay no income or sales tax, am not legally required to buckle myself up in the car, can own any knife I damn well please, don't need a "permit" for a gun, can marry another man if I wanted to, and soon will have access to medicinal marijuana.

Go down and click my sig. Real shit happens in the real world, and you bet your ass it sometimes happens as a result of a slashdot post.

NH unemployment is the lowest in the New England, if not the East coast, and has been for the last decade.

This was part of the debate as to which state to move to. As was having a seaport. Free-er trade than the rest of the country could mean big bucks down the road.

It is true that amongst the small set of early movers, a smaller still subset of this small set of individuals have chosen to further concentrate their subset of ideas of how to best minimize the effects of force on their lives.

Meaning - yeah, if you live in Grafton then you will live in interesting times.

There are a whole lot of anarchists here in NH. They decide to engage in the political system, or not, as they wish. It is great to have anarchists as part of the greater discussion. When talking about politics, one is talking about force - at least here in NH that is not disputed and is part of the framework of debate. ... some of them are even elected, under different costumes.

The first time the FSP was on /. I was tempted. The second time the FSP was on /. I signed up.

Now I've lived here for five years. This is the real deal, NH has the perfect state and local government for this experiment. Politics is the unofficial state sport of NH with 400 state reps for only 1.3 million constituents that are about equally divided between the two major parties. Republican and democratic parties engage our ideas, sometimes in battle, other times in courtship. You don't have to explain first principles over and over again, everyone here knows government like fire can be a dangerous master, you get to have debate and make an impact on people and policy with all that stuff as accepted framework of the discussion.