"We are pleased Roscomos wants to continue full use of the International Space Station through 2024 -- a priority of ours -- and expressed interest in continuing international cooperation for human space exploration beyond that. The United States is planning to lead a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, and we have advanced that effort farther than at any point in NASA's history. We welcome international support for this ambitious undertaking.

Yeah, that's basically "Go F* yourselves" in diplomatic speech.

And as it should be.

That'll be why our street is full of new trucks and SUVs. They need them to drive to Wal-Mart, I guess.

Big retail chains are doomed. They can't compete on price with online stores, and they can't compete on service with local stores who don't have to send most of their profits to the stock market. This has little or nothing to do with Harper, unless you believe a more left-wing government would have nationalized Future Shop to keep it open.

We had Future Shop and about four other chains and a ouple of local stores. Then we got Best Buy as well, selling the same things as Future Shop, at the same prices. Now we have Best Buy and about four other chains and a couple of local stores. Hardly a 'monopoly'.

I buy most of my electronics from Amazon or one of the local stores. Future Shop was usually more expensive, and the staff clueless. I never understood why Best Buy kept them around.

One thing that dark energy can't be is *all* fundamental constants, plus position, velocity, etc scaling up evenly. Because if such was the case then there would be no perceptible change.

If youe saying that for example what is ground state would change too then it seems like you're arguing that things at the quantum level *aren't* moving into higher energy states. But things at the macroscopic level absolutely are moving into a higher energy state. So are you arguing that dark energy doesn't act on the quantum scale? I find that difficult to accept if so.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "alter orbital structure and energy levels"? Are you saying that the energy level of, say, ground state would increase with time? If so that sounds... weird. And sounds like *that* should have detectable consequences too, if so.

That the thing about dark matter... it has a perfectly reasonable explanation (WIMPs). It's not that weird of a "thing".

Dark energy on the other hand, that's just WEIRD ;) It doesn't act like any "energy" as we know it, even though everything is clearly moving into a higher energy state. A question I've had for a while... if space itself is being inflated (or any sort of mathematically equivalent scenario) - everything inflating in all directions at all scales - wouldn't there be some sort of weak radiation signal from electrons expanding into a higher energy state due to dark energy and then collapsing back down? But I have trouble picturing how to reconcile an absolute, varying distance at the atomic scale with quantization of energy states, positions, etc...

Isn't this what one would expect if dark matter is WIMPs?

Sure there is: add this to the CPDLC standard and make all of the hardware modifications needed to support it:

----
Message type: Revert flight plan and lock
Message arguments: TIME: the time of the flight plan to use
Message description: Revert to the flight plan that was active at TIME that had been approved by both ground control and the pilot; engage autopilot; and disable all pilot / copilot access to all systems. If there is no approved flight plan then the flight plan is to return to the nearest suitable airport in the most direct route possible.
----

Additional modifications: Make sure that the pilot can never disable datalink communications with ground by any means that ground wouldn't have time to respond to.

Result: Nobody is ever "remote controlling" the plane from the ground. A murderous / terrorist ground controller can't crash the plane, only make it autopilot itself on a previously approved or otherwise reasonable flight plan. A pilot behaving suspiciously can't crash the plane, as ground control will just engage the autopilot and lock them out. To abuse the system both ground and the pilot would have to agree on a suicidal flight plan.

There's already been at least one case of a homicidal pilot being overpowered by the other people in the cockpit. if I remember correctly, some people on board died, but, if the pilot had been on his own in the cockpit, they'd probably all have died.

So... BZZT... wrong.

Oh, sorry, I just double-checked, and the Tesla did just win the race :).

At least it's faster than a Tesla.

There's a thing called an autopilot. A few hours with MS Flight Sim would be enough to train them how to set a safe altitude and ensure it's turned on.

But that would only matter if the other pilot couldn't get into the cockpit.

Besides which, even someone who's willing to take a ten minute ride to certain death probably wouldn't do so if someone else is sitting there watching them. They could have crashed the plane into the ground during the takeoff or landing, with the captain right beside them, but waited for him to leave instead.

If they're having to restart Saturn V production just to launch the thing, no wonder the cost is so high!

Yeah, the suggested method for generating passwords generates needlessly long passwords. The total entropy is good, but the entropy per character is pretty poor. You get much better entropy per character with abbreviation passwords, where you have a sentence or group of random words and you use the first letter from each, or second, or last, or alternating, or whatever suits you. It's still not as much entropy per character as a random pattern, but it's much better than writing out full words - and pops into your head just as fast (because it is, in essence, the same).