Last week on july 17 at approx 10pm EDT, I saw the most awesome meteor of my life. I'm used to seeing meteors as a pin-point source of light moving in the sky, but this was nothing like that. This meteor had a shape to it, it was cigar shaped and about as long as a 1cm would appear head at arm's length. In about a half second it crossed 30 degrees of sky and left a visible smoke trail!

Actualy I was very surprised that it was soundless, I've spent the last week scanning the papers and internet for reports of other sitings or UFO reports but have found nothing.

As anyone can see by my user number, 254554, I've been on slashdot for quite a while. Originaly moderation duties was something I took very seriously, and didn't happen very often either. after a couple of +5 posts, I got mod points about once a month. Now however I'm getting mod points about once a week; thats a lot of work to do properly. It almost seems that the effort to moderate well is greater than the effort that the editors put into editing.

Also I think that everone should have at least one journal entry with comments enabled, especial if they have no email on slashdot; so a message can be left that might be a little too offtopic for a normal thead.

  I've often thought about putting some of the people that have posted stuff that's really pissed me off on my enemies list, then haunt their postings for things that can be modded down, which would burn off some excess karma and get my mod points back down to a reasonable level, or is that what everybody else is doing?

"Dont' it seem if you're SCO, you don't know what you've bought or you sold;

They sued IBM and were turned into a Parking Lot."

I've been thinking about Email Clients and spam alot lately, spam has been very topical lately.
mostly I'm thinking that an Email client that
1. only down loads header on first connect
  a.checks the headers against known open-relays
  b. maintains a database of know "spam" IP addresses for simple statistical analysis
  c. makes sure that the FROM, REPLY-TO, and BOUNCE fields are the same as the originating domain.
  d. do some baysian filtering
2. maintains a whitelist of friends and business associates for priority handling
3. alows the mesage to be deleted from the pop server without downloading the body of the Email
4. de-CGIifes the image tags
5. randomly bounces a few questionables and request a resend to confirm its from a human being.

stopping a few spams that sneak through the existing systems would realy give the spammers fits because the get such a pathetic response on their campaines.
  it shouldn't be to hard to do, just cut and paste from some open-source projects could get a prototype up for testing pretty quick.

I've often found all of the glum and doom prophecies about the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere to be a bit unbelieveble. Finally I decided to do a bunch of googling for reputable website about the role of CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming. The results are interesting, currently a program called MODTRAN is the best software for modeling the effects of GHG, Green House Gasses, on Infrared transmission through the atmosphere. This software was developed for the DOD to aid in IR sattelite imagery. It shows the CO2 has the most effect from 0 to 10 ppm and the increased effect falls off rapidly. Very little increase in IR absorbtion is shown when CO2 is varied between 100ppm and 1000ppm, we are presently at the ~360ppm level. In short I still see only the vaguest relationship between the increase in CO2 levels and global warming.

Other gasses like Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, have much more potent effects on heat retention of the planet; but significant natural mechanisms exist to remove these gasses from the atmosphere. The halogenated hydrocarbons have an extremely potent effect on heat retention, but we have decided to allow the usage of the worst of these in third world countries that have the least ability to properly handle them.

If people are really worried about global warming the single most effective thing that could be done is to return to ammonia based refrigerant systems, followed by agressive reduction of hydrocarbon emmisions, not worrying about CO2

As Retired US Military and former NBC Defense NCO, Nuclear.Biological and Chemical ware fare defense Non-Commissioned Officer, no one understands better all of the pros and cons of the impending conflict.

Firstly my friends, family, and former associates will likely be placed in harms way. Even if nothing else happens, many will be exposed to indigenous bacteria, viruses and other parasites for which they have no natural immunity, however there will be accidents, the mere intensity of military operations will insure it. They will be exposed to both Friendly-fire accidents and enemy fire.

Secondly there really is nothing to be gained for us. If we needed to raid for more oil Mexico would be more profitable for us. If we needed to get Macho and depose a dictator wouldn't our neighbor Cuba with their President Castro fill the bill in a more convienient manner? A military operation will be expensive both monitarily and in intermational ill-will.

So why will it happen? Because it's not a war, it's a hostage rescue that's why. Saddam Hussein is primarily holding the Iraqis hostage and along with them the United States and the rest of the world. Hussein as a child was a chicken thief who went caught will kill the chicken rather than be forced to return it to its rightfull owner.

I've noticed that the slashdot community has gotten a lot more eclectic over the years. in the old days all most everybody used some kind of *nix. Now we have a lot more Windows users, and some of the religious wars have shifted so I'm making a greater effort to be more moderate in moderation than before.

Also I've noticed that moderation is happening a lot quicker than before. I find it strange that I can go into a topic from the front page that list say 9 comments and find that some are already modded to +5 and most of the flakey stuff is already -1.