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Comment Re:A funnel (Score 1) 379

You would need a powerful laser to burn off surface of space junk but that's no problem, we've got cutting laser that have been able to do that for decades. It's the focus that's the issue, poor focus wastes a lot of power so you need more brute force light to compensate. Once you've got something like that in place though there's no problem. The vapour given off by rapidly heated space junk is just gas, by the time it cools down enough to act like a solid again it's too spread out to crystallise - no threat to anything. The propulsive effect you get isn't great, but not so tiny that it isn't worth doing, particularly for junk in low orbits that only need a tiny nudge to skim atmosphere.

Comment Re:BP? (Score 1) 119

"So what you do is weave it into a circle of mats- which are fed into an old-fashioned wringer-washer on the deck of a tanker- and deployed off starboard aft and recovered port aft....just sail it around in circles, using the friction of the wringers to reel in and redeploy the circle of matts.(sic)"

Combine this with a social network campaign to "Save the Coasts!" that collects human hair on a massive scale. Just think! It would be "cool" to be bald! A statement of commitment to the environment! ...and it'd give millions of Twitter users something to actually tweet about.

Well...maybe not.

Comment Re:Good thing (Score 1) 372

Yes it means that I can play h.264 video on a Linux distro without jumping through hoops.

Honestly just use Debian if you really don't like it.
Canonical had three choices.
1. Not include it and cause new users problems. Maybe big enough problems that they stop using Linux
2. Just include it anyway and face a long nasty court battle.
3. Pay for it and include it.
Since they already offer Flash and the none GPL video drivers so this not being GPL is no big deal.

Comment Re:So how did they see the kid eating candy? (Score 2, Insightful) 232

1. The student can not turn on the Web cam only the school can.
2. It is still spying and illegal to remotely turn on a recording device and then later recover the data from the device. You know like planting say a tape-recorder in a conference room.
3. They reviews the pictures they got from spying.
4. It seems that they told the student but no where did I see that they informed the parents.
5. What proof do you have that the picture was on the local drive and sent over the net? Even if it was it just doesn't matter.
6. YOU DON"T FREAKING NEED A WEB CAM TO TRACK A LAPTOP! All they need to know was that it was accessing the net from a location that wasn't the school!
Frankly WHAT IS DUMB AS A BOX OF ROCKS is if they really didn't want the laptops to work off campus they could have had it lock if they used it off the school network if it was not insured!

Even if everything you say is right so?
They illegally spied on the kid. Jail time.

Comment Obligatory Galaxy Quest (Score 2, Funny) 302

Scene from one of the funniest movies ever:

[Jason is being menaced by a huge monster made of rocks.]
Tommy Webber: Go for the eyes, like in episode 22!
Jason Nesmith: It doesn't have any eyes!
Tommy Webber: Well, then, go for the throat or something. Its vulnerable spots!
Jason Nesmith: It's a rock! It doesn't have any vulnerable spots!
Guy Fleegman: I know! You'll need to make a weapon. Look around; can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?

Comment Genre launches (Score 1) 250

Unless your game concept is a one in a million idea that only comes around once a decade (to change the face of the gaming industry and inspire a thousand and one clones), there is no market for it.

To put it into perspective, the last few genre launches were probably FaceBall 2000, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64, and Parappa the Rapper. Have there been any genre launches in the past decade?

Comment Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score 1) 565

These domes must be custom fit to the leak, depth, and seabed hardness. It may look crude but it has many important engineering points. Also, they are so large that it is impractical to move it by any method other than shipping. Shipping between coastlines takes longer than building it on-site like they are doing. Also because of the size and shape, it is very difficult to keep them off-dock because they are not functional for over-the-road delivery. Permanent on-dock space is expensive (I work for a port company).

So they would have to keep multiple sizes on each multiple coastlines on-dock to cover a failsafe (blowout valve) that has never failed. I don't think they deserve the criticism you're giving them for not predicting such a extremely unlikely scenario and planning around it.

Comment Re:Performance? (Score 3, Insightful) 209

Well, one thing this will hopefully cut down on is all the extra images and associated markup that's being used today when attempting to create something that doesn't just look like a flat, ugly and ancient chunk of text (hint: the web has evolved past being the equivalent of a bunch of networked text files). It also means that designers can more easily make sites that don't break for some users because they don't have the right fonts (this is a major issue, the default serif and sans-serif fonts are rarely the same between operating systems and a lot of times even versions of the same operating system).

Dismissing websites that have actually been designed as opposed to just latex2html-ified as "art" really just makes you come off as a grumpy person with no sense for estetics and good presentation of the information.

I'm not saying this won't be abused, everything that can be abused will be abused, most likely by some teenager who just took his/her school's "intro to web design" course that teaches only the basics of "how" and not the "why" (as in, "how" to use web fonts, not "why" you should use them). Also, with a little luck this will be a feature that you can disable for those sites that insist on misbehaving.

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