Why is this linking to a Gawker site (IO9) instead of the actual original article at:
http://www.universetoday.com/117615/making-the-trip-to-mars-cheaper-and-easier-the-case-for-ballistic-capture/

The Gawker site merely copies/pastes what the original article states plus ad LOADS of additional advertising.
How does this get past the Slashdot editors? Was this an intentional Promo or has Slashdot declined just this much these days :(

Considering that the obvious consequence of doing such a thing (and what actually happened) is a detailed review of the hack by our various national security agencies, and considering that the obvious result of such a review would be finding out that Sony itself was responsible - only the most ill-informed, tin foil wearing conspiracy nut would believe that a huge corporation would expose themselves to such a risk.

Also the release of internal emails and salaries .... seriously? How could you possibly believe that Sony would release that themselves?
Think Better.

Spoilers: In the end of the movie Kim Jung-un turns out to be a pretty fun guy (aside from the debauchery and keeping the population in slavery and all) and the would - be assassins don't do the dirty deed because of it. In other words the movie actually put's down America's CIA killing machine and puts Kim Jung in a far better light than he deserves.

The only thing worse and with less sense of humor than the CIA is ... the Korean dictatorship. Had they not wigged out over a freaking B-list movie than their Supreme A-Hole would have garnered some degree of sympathy form the American public but instead they decided to shoot themselves in their foot once again.

(also .... Sony vs. N. Korea??? .... I'm finding it pretty hard to really root for any of those schmucks here)

This is a Brilliant idea!
The Assange part of the statue will, of course, be hollow and when the thing makes it's way to Venezuela - out pops Julian and ... Asylum!

That THAT Mi5 !

I used to enjoy internet discussions - back in the early 90's when the bar to entry was at least a 105-110 IQ. Now that everyone can "discuss" it becomes obvious that the roughly 23-25% of humanity who are idiots have roughly 75% more time and willingness to post than anyone else which drives the bulk of the sensible posters away and it spirals downwards from there.

The concept of free and open discussion is a failed concept. There need to be bars to entry in order to prevent the 25% from taking up 90% of a forum's bandwidth. I am sure that you have noticed that on any given forum the most prolific posters are inevitably the worst posters - driving other far more informed and interesting posters away? It could be something as simple as requiring a credit card and a $2 fee to participate. When you troll, flame,spam or repeatedly say something incredibly, undeniably stupid than you and your card is banned. There are only so many $2 fees and so many credit cards that someone can reasonably obtain. Additionally how about limiting the posting privileges of both the newest AND THE MOST PROLIFIC contributors so that one person can not dominate a discussion.

I know , I know - cue the rallying cry of "freeze peach!" once again and those are the posters that I am talking about.

Why is this still being posted? Rossi has a background of being convicted for fraud. The "e-cat" scam has been going on for at least 6 years now with nothing at all to show for it. Not. One Single. Thing. There is even less chance of Rossi having developed a cold fusion device than there is of Moller successfully building an actual flying car.

Hey I've got an idea let's put Rossi's ecat into Moller's flying car and send both those a-holes to the moon.

 

Yes - How insightful! And instead of having a piece of pie now and then why don't we all just satisfy ourselves with some unsweetened bran flakes. Oh hey! Why eat ice cream when you can eat some oats? Why have a steak when you can eat a stick of celery?? Just why DO people want to have a bit of pleasure in their lives anyways? More importantly, exactly how do the most trite comments manage to get modded up to "insightful" ??

Annnnndddd wrong . Without regard to the annoying pedantry involved in conflating a radio telescope with an optical telescope, of which this article is obviously about, it is in fact the Arecibo radio-telescope which is the largest radio telescope, neither of which has jack to do with this article.

I remember when HP made really, really (!!) great stuff {sigh}
Those days are long gone.

The Woz came from there originally and almost never left because the environment for engineers was just that good but the money grubbing CEOs and B.O.D. killed all that long ago

Today HP shares only 2 letters with it's former glory and that is not nearly enough.

HP needs to just die and go away - soon.

It's interesting (and not coincidental) to note that perhaps the very best of the best of the moderators is stepping down and several of the younger newer and frankly less ... ummm ... rock solid of the moderators are remaining.

I tried MeFi some years back and grew disaffected with the environment. I was initially attracted because of the very heavy attention to keeping things on topic and keeping the crazies away but soon grew disenchanted when it became apparent that the uber-heavy moderation was not applied uniformly. Friends of the site were granted far more leniency than others and the sheer amount of what I am forced to label as misplaced political correctness from the younger staff (staff who are staying on) was outright annoying.

Google did not kill MetaFilter. Metafilter did that to themselves by allowing disparity in their moderation and substituting hipsteresque faux-concern for alleged dubious subject matter to prevail over true conversation. I have dropped in from time to time to watch the membership decline and have seen the conversation stagnate.

Buy-bye Mefi (and Boing-Boing) - you were great when you were great but now .... not so much.
The world moves on.

On the Internet nobody knows that you're unemployed.

Lennier ended up on a small farm located on an earth-like planet way on the outskirts of Grid Epsilon and lived a happy, if uneventful, life with his trusty space-collie as his most trusted friend.

You don't have to be a Michael Straczynski to know that B5 had a "beginning of the story" and an "end of the story". One of the best decisions that Mr. Straczynski ever made was to allow the story to end (and end grandly I also have to say).

Too many cheap crap-hounds (*cough*couch*abrams*cough*) try to extend a story as long as they are able to squeeze money out of it and are eventually revealed to have no idea what they were doing or where they were going with it. Straczynski told a really great story that ended i a really great way. Live and art have to move on.

A 4 TB slowish seagate hard disk can be had for about $160ish if you look around. Five of them are $750. An inexpensive bod tower such as a TowerRAID 4 Bay eSATA RAID runs about $150. Get two of them.

Total cost is around $1100 and the solution is expandable .

>. All the transactions of all the people are public and is verified by multiple entities

Oh really? So you know *all* the principle entities of Mt. Gox? You know just where they were storing/investing that HALF A BILLION DOLLARS ? You know the names of the independent accounting agency that oversaw that HALF A BILLION DOLLARS ?

You know none of that and very little else.

Why who ever would have thought that when you give have a f!@kig BILLION dollars to a more than less anonymous source(s) by anonymous means and with no oversight - why who every would have thought that maybe - just maybe - someone would be tempted to just walk the hell away with Half a BILLION??

You know who didn't think that way? Some chump wanna-be geeks with too much disposable income and too little common sense.