Monty Python's Meaning Of Life: Crimson Permanent Assurance
Bean Counters there have a life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX61PUZ3xkI
When Crimson Permanent Assurance takes over warranties will be a thing of the past!

Good point.

BitZStream.
Nicely done and fucking awesome post. Best /. Read for me in years.

Ying,
    I'm reviewing your trajectory data, Just wanted to double check... I'm sure the astroid is going to miss us, but wanted to double triple check, you remember that probe that sort-of hit mars?
    So your measurements of the acceleration were in inches per second, and slugs of force right? Thats what we have been using here at NASA, we never managed to convert to the metric system in the '70s.
As far as I can tell, this things going to miss us by a mile right? Or was that a kilometer?

The laser will be aimed at the HP Pavillion in San-Jose. There are Sharks there.

Oh my god...
It's full of...
Stray socks and dryer lint!

I'm not sure, but if you built a private spaceship, you would be hard to chase, given that the US government has no official space flying capability. If you leave US airspace before leaving 18,000 feet, I think your probably fine. My point is that if you can solve the technical problems, you can just go. Join an EAA chapter, and build a spaceship in your garage, start the open source mars project...let's do it.
 

I think I agree to this, but the nail in the coffin was spinning off Agilent in the late 90's, since them it's been a downward cycle IMHO. . That engineering/scientific business was what brought HP into the world. The calculator division used to be huge!

Brilliant solution! The company coul be split into two business units, H-Net and P-Flix, which would raise prices, make you go to the nearest Best Buy to pick up your movies once a week, where you have to sit through a 90 minute timeshare sales pitch or buy a laptop before you can take your movie home.

They could alternately announce price hikes, name changes and spin offs until customers get so fed up, they start buying crayons and paper to draw their own entertainment.

I love the use of the term 1% er. Nicely done.

You are 100% on. I REFUSE to wait for any user interface. I also find "it's now OK for you to shutdown" what about power outages. If an OS can't let me be in charge, it fails.

Hate to ask, what is a PHB? I know what a PhD is but a PHB has me wondering what I'm missing.

I agree, as much as it would be cool to see a breakthrough here, it could be a failure to calibrate, or account for propagation delay betwwn triggers in an instrument.

It's not too hard to consider mining a star here are some examples:
1) Wait until the star is bar hopping, and steal the bling from their jewelry box.
2) Remove the heavy elements from the outside of the stars Bentley.
3) When the star enters rehab, file a leon on the heavy elements, then pay to have them delivered to you.
4) After the big bang, when the star is asleep, take a few heavy elements.