Comment Re:Not faultless (Score 5, Funny) 536
How about if Comcast came out and shot the guy?
We called to shoot you but you were out. Please call 1-800-XFINISHYOU to reschedule.
Comment Related poem (Score 1) 119
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Comment Re:On odd artifact of affect... (Score 1) 130
Colin Pillinger interview transcript (PDF):
We've had lots of cats that have wandered off and... but that was the thing about the name, everybody congratulated us on the name Beagle 2 as inspirational, until after it didn't call in and we had all manner of e-mails, texts, telephone calls, letters saying didn't you realise that Beagles are the worst dogs you could possibly have to let off the leash - they run off, they chase something, they don't come back when they're called, they only come home when they're hungry and they show no sign of remorse.
Submission + - Lost Beagle2 probe found 'intact' on Mars (bbc.co.uk)
Stolga writes: The missing Mars robot Beagle2 has been found on the surface of the Red Planet, apparently intact.
High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.
The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003, using parachutes and airbags — but no radio contact was ever made with the probe.
Many scientists assumed it had been destroyed in a high-velocity impact.
High-resolution images taken from orbit have identified its landing location, and it looks to be in one piece.
The UK-led probe tried to make a soft touchdown on the dusty world on Christmas Day, 2003, using parachutes and airbags — but no radio contact was ever made with the probe.
Many scientists assumed it had been destroyed in a high-velocity impact.
Comment C-SPAN has some good programs (Score 1) 148
Q&A had an interesting interview about "The Birth of a Nation" recently, and there are a lot of good in-depth interviews about recent books. Probably not "based on comics" though...
Sony Accused of Pirating Music In "The Interview" 180
the simurgh writes As the controversy surrounding Sony's handling of its hack, the movie The Interview and its aftermath continues, a singer is claiming that after failing to reach terms with Sony, the company put her music in the movie anyway. Yoon Mi-rae (real name Natasha Shanta Reid) is a U.S.-born hip hop and R&B singer who currently releases music on the Feel Ghood Music label. Sshe and her label claim that her track we learned that the track 'Pay Day' has been used without permission, legal procedure, or contracts.
Comment Re:Alogrithms (Score 1) 292
Hurrah pour Robur-le-Conquérant ! s’écria une voix ironique.
Robur-le-Conqérant by Jules Verne has over 1000 hyphens.
$35 Quad-core Hacker SBC Offers Raspberry Pi-like Size and I/O 140
DeviceGuru writes: Hardkernel has again set its sights on the Raspberry Pi with a new $35 Odroid-C1 hacker board that matches the RPI's board size and offers a mostly similar 40-pin expansion connector. Unlike the previous $30 Odroid-W that used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi and was soon cancelled due to lack of BCM2835 SoC availability, the Odroid-C1 is based on a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 based Amlogic S805 SoC, which integrates the Mali-400 GPU found on Allwinner's popular SoCs. Touted advantages over the similarly priced Raspberry Pi Model B+ include a substantially more powerful processor, double the RAM, an extra USB2.0 port that adds Device/OTG, and GbE rather than 10/100 Ethernet.
Comment Re:Take a look at who you elected/reelected (Score 4, Informative) 47
Democrats, Republicans... anyone who thinks there's actually a difference between them is a dumbass.
It does seem to matter when it comes to picking Supreme Court Justices. Nobody would claim that Alito and Scalia are interchangeable with Kagan and Sotomayor. Are you really saying it doesn't matter who chooses the next few justices?
And this has an impact on a lot of real world issues: http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
There is also the five-finger speech. It generally comes when a new clerk asks, in dismay and outrage, how a majority of the Court has arrived at a decision he or she feels is flagrantly unjust. Justice Brennan holds up his hand, wriggles his five fingers, and says, “Five votes. Five votes can do anything around here.”
Comment A thousand KBOs discovered, not dwarf planets (Score 5, Informative) 77
The article confuses Kuiper Belt Objects (more than one thousand discovered), and dwarf planets. To quote Wikipedia: "The IAU recognizes five bodies as dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake".
2015 will be a great year for looking at two of these. As well as New Horizons, there is also the Dawn probe on its way to orbit Ceres.
Comment Second person to vote for card games here (Score 1) 171
Card games sound the coolest, making you think of movies, smoke, poker, baccarat, Bond, etc.
Sadly my vote was for solitaire on the Nexus 7...
Comment Re:Can Iowa handle a circus that large? (Score 1) 433
Diffidence is "modesty or shyness resulting from a lack of self-confidence". I think you mean "deference".
Comment Elevator in the sky with diamonds (Score 2) 79
You wouldn't guess from the summary that the article title is "Going up! Cosmic elevator could reach space on a cable made of diamonds".
Comment Re:Fuck them sideways with a rusty chainsaw! (Score 1) 118
..in-car devices that insurance companies use to monitor policyholders' driving
Over my dead body. *find tiny cellphone antenna* *SNIP*
If you're a clever insurance company you ask people if they want tracking in return for lower premiums. If your competitors are charging $300, you make the "no" people pay $315 and the "yes" people people pay $285. Then all the bad drivers and all the people concerned about privacy go off to another insurance company. Given the success of Facebook and Twitter, it looks like only 0.001% of the population cares about privacy. Therefore 99+% of the people who move across to your competitors are probably not very profitable anyway. Win-win!
So it's saying "yes" or "no" to the tracking device that is the important part, not the driving data. As long as you have enough blinky lights (and a few real 3G connections) so people think they might be monitored, then you are golden.
Comment Re:a collision wouldn't surprise me (Score 4, Informative) 65
For somw reason, it wouldn't surprise me if these two craft collided, despite being the only two approaching the entire planet. It just seems that any time a government spends a lot of money to do anything, it normally ends with a fail worthy of Monty Python
There's a lot of exciting stuff happening right now. The Dawn mission is on its way to get a close look at Ceres in April next year. Rosetta is sending a lander onto a comet (which is about to do the exciting thing for comets - i.e. go near the sun). New Horizons is going to fly past Pluto next July. There are two rovers exploring Mars. Not to mention Cassini, Messenger, etc. You can be negative if you like, but I think these missions are pretty amazing.
