but not THAT smart!

I always knew they could count to three. However other birds may be better at counting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

I was wondering about that too. Are they overly fixated on Troi? Or hugely disappointed about What Might Have Been?

Agreed, kind of funny. Looking at the videos at the link, it's obvious to me though: that large metal screw that pops out is a critical weak link in the entire vehicle. Why, armadillos could DIE if they were hit by a screw being ejected like that!

I wonder if film of a Tesla running over an antitank mine is next.

Depends on what you consider damage. I submit that the tank and vehicle tracks left in desert areas during WW II exercises 70 bloody years ago might still be visible .. but I hardly consider them damage. You'll have to prove the value of "desert pavement" to me first. And your claim that deserts are "extremely valuable to the planet" is questionable too. I submit that the Gobi Desert was a lot more useful to the dinosaurs fossilized there when it was green and lovely than it's been for the past dozens of millions of years.

They're all missing the main point, the bottom line, the simple solution:

The customer (that's you, the Internet user) pays for what he uses. Bandwidth, total gigabytes, whatever. You wanna watch Netflix? No problem, Bunky: pay for it. ALL of it, including the bandwidth you gobble while viewing.

Your subscription to Netflix pays them for their procurement, storage and upload costs. Your subscription to AT&T (or whoever your ISP is) pays for your download bandwidth.

Simple. I don't know why they're making this so hard.

Maybe not. The complaints and hugely embarrassing (too obvious?) political fixes have finally drawn in a Federal grand jury .. for what that's worth.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

I'm in Nawth Ca'lina; hope something works out. I wonder if anyone has a clue as to how to clean a river once it's been polluted by sludge like this? Vacuum the bottom?

Actually, a lot of laws are being changed to permit just this. And a lot of police departments, officials, etc. are losing their jobs when they interfere with this.

It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but it IS getting better. And a good thing too, IMHO.

An RTG wouldn't produce any waste, being completely self-contained. The Soviets used them for years to power lighthouses and other remote sites, as did the USAF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

The objection might be price, since I have no idea how much a 100W or 200W RTG would cost. But you'd save all the manpower costs and risks of having to build something, they're quite tough and immune to most meteorological conditions, and easily replaced at the end of their life cycles (10 years in the case of the most common Soviet ones).

As I understand it, no one says you can't have a nuclear power plant (especially an RTG) in Antarctica. McMurdo had one for a decade (albeit with problems).

http://www.takepart.com/articl...

So these RTG's should do just fine .. if they can afford it.

Study what you know nothing about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

"Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan; the number exceeded that of all American military casualties of the 65 years following the end of World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock."

That's right: we're STILL awarding Purple Heart medals manufactured for that invasion.

A friend suggested they just make the specs open source. Someone will build it :-)

Perhaps it wouldn't be completely infeasible to consider a large fixed-wing model aircraft (like a C-130 model?) programmed to autonomously land on an aircraft carrier? One nice and stable and stationary, like in Norfolk Naval Yard? With an onboard video camera transmitting to an external recorder of course, since the Navy probably wouldn't have much of a sense of humor about this sort of thing and you might not want to ask for it back.

Sure would make for a hell of a Youtube video though :-)

Not that I'm suggesting anyone try anything like that, of course, having no wish to visit Guantanamo (despite the friendly moose).

IF you're one dead-set on controlling others and their lives. Me, I'm a firm believer in "Darwin Rules". Make sure the truth is out there (e.g., if it's addictive like other medications that one horror story above describes). But if some damned fool is set on destroying his life (and possibly his liver, teeth, eyes, brain, etc.) with drug abuse .. hey .. I'm not standing in his way, not for a minute.

I fully agree. And, whatever you do, don't start any damned mass extinctions, okay?

Yes, still .. for 4-5 years now, and still enjoying it.

Years ago I used to enjoy the various "giant walking machine" sorts of games (MechWarrior and the like), the multi-user online MMOG ones. But the hackers and cheats spoiled them for me. I played Warbirds (a fairly realistic MMOG WW II flight sim) for years, until game changes and a loss of other users made it too boring. Battleground Europe, another MMOG (you see the pattern now?) was fun for a year, me and my trusty German antitank gun :-) But the game became non-fun for a solo player like myself and I dropped out of it too. Tried Star Wars: The Old Republic, too rigid and structured despite interesting graphics. Played World of Tanks for a while because of its highly realistic tank models and interesting terrain .. but the player interaction and totally silly "tactics" drove me away. Just couldn't get into Eve, despite its huge popularity.

Although I play solo in almost all my games (I'm not very social), I enjoy having other players around, the unexpected things that happen, even the occasional social intercourse. So I prefer the online multiplayer games rather than solo console games on my PC. However I'm not young and my reflexes are not as they once were, so these "twitch" shooter games are right out: no way I'm going to compete or even survive with the 14-year-old players. And if the game is a bloody trivia contest of things you must memorize, hugely complicated User Interfaces and keyboard commands .. fageddaboudit. I'm not spending my bloody LIFE on this thing, you know.

So I'm sticking with World of Warcraft. Thanks, Blizzard: you done good. And nothing in the game's turned me off yet.

Is American Idol still hiring?