Who do you think we have to ask permission of to leave the planet and travel to another?

I find it interesting that your test of readiness isn't technical, but social. It is like saying that if everybody doesn't obey some set of arbitrary standards on the Titanic, nobody gets to go to the lifeboats.

You agree with the notion of restrictions on the freedom of humanity? When does that end?

Now if only they actually harvest and store it.

... calculate the probability of a single event (asteroid arrival) in a period of 50 years that strikes a population-dense area.

Not a single event. One or more.

(By the way: I was just explaining how the poster's formula worked, not vouching for its correctness for the problem. Nevertheless, it strikes me as a reasonable quick approximation, given the uncertainty of the single 13-year n=26 sample of meteor arrivals.)

You know you have a really fast elevator when it gets its own theme song and maybe a TV show or movie. Maybe something like "Smokey in the Elevator," or "The Elevators a Hazard."

I wonder if Rosco P. Coltrane is available? He might work as sheriff.

What about an Emacs package? Or does the band not speak with a Lisp?

It's always fascinating to find yet another way one differs from hundreds of millions or even billions of other people.

Music to be pwned by.

That doesn't seem to be true.

The Many Flaws of Dual_EC_DRBG

I don't remember if I've seen that link before, but thanks for sharing it. That is a great explanation, and reinforces the point I've been making.

The Many Flaws of Dual_EC_DRBG

in other words, net neutrality would remain, but content providers could pay to BOOST the speed at which the internet provider customers received their content

Which only lasts until the next increment in consumer connection speed is rolled out. Then the companies that pay get to use it, but - SURPRISE! - nobody else does.

If this proposal had gone into effect before broadband became common you'd be hooked to on your, say, 5 Mbps DSL line, trying to watch videos at 56 kbps.

The problem here isn't differentiated services - which can be valuable to a lot of us. The problem is that here in the US we have effective ISP monopolies or duopolies in nearly every region.

The other part of the problem is that the net neutrality advocates have been fighting on the wrong battleground.

As you point out: The prblem isn't some packets getting preferences over others: Sometimes that makes things BETTER for users. The problem is companies using their ability to configure this to give their own (and affiliates') carried-by-ISPs services an advantage, or artificially DISadvatntge packets of other providers unless an extra toll is paid, to the disadvantage of their customers.

The FCC is not the place to fight that battle. The correct venues are the Department of Justice's Antitrust division (is giving content the ISP's affiliate provides an advantage over that of others an illegal "tying"?), the FTC (is penalizing others' packets a consumer fraud, providing something less than what is understood to be "internet service"?) and perhaps congress.

I don't see how this can reasonably be resolved short of breaking up media conglomerates to separate information transport from providing "content" and other information service beyond information transport. Allowing them to be combined into a single company is a recipie for conflict-of-interest, at the cost of the consumer.

Why don't you ask Interop why they basically returned a Class A network address block?

Interop Returns 16 Million IPv4 Addresses

Interop gives back a month’s worth of IPv4 addresses

Your point is wrong. Much of the internet is reached by client nodes using NAT now.

Does your internet have any firewalls on it?

Client nodes reach the public internet just fine using NAT.

My math isn't very strong; can you explain the (1-0.3*0.03)^10 part?

You mean (1-0.3*0.03)^100? (You lost a digit.) Let's walk it:

0.3 land fraction = probability a given meteor hits over land (assuming equal likelyhood it hits any given area).
0.3 * 0.03 Multiply by the fraction of land that's urban to get the probability it hits over urban land.
1- 0.3*0.03 Convert to the probability it misses all urban land. (P(hit) + P(miss) = 1 (certainty)).
(1-0.3*0.03)^100 We get a hundred of 'em in 50 years (assuming 2000-2013 is typical). Raise to the hundredth power to get the jackpot probably that they ALL miss.
1-(1-0.3*0.03)^100 Convert to the probabiltiy that at least one doesn't miss.