That just means that it is in an elliptical orbit, out near its apogee. That orbit will pull it closer, speeding it up, until it reaches its perigee, which will throw it back out to its apogee. Around and around we go, unless the perigee is within the atmosphere.

Mind you, it was able to drop most of it by running into the top of the earth's atmosphere. The space shuttle orbits within the outer reaches of earth's atmosphere - the sun's atmosphere is a very long way away.

In order to take something from earth orbit and get it to the sun, you have to take it from earth's speed of 30 km/sec and slow it down to zero. Only when will it fall into the sun. If you leave any of that orbital speed on that object, then it will miss the sun, swing around it like a comet, and head back to where it came from. You could perhaps use a fly-by of Venus and/or Mercury to help you with that, but it's still a near-impossible thing to do. This is what is meant here by de-orbit.

... although it undoubtedly would be a good move. Good for Australia, although a better move would not involve transporting the stuff halfway across the planet.

This is one ex-politician speaking - and speaking more sense than he ever did while in office.

It's a myth that we don't know what to do about nuclear waste - we know exactly what to do with it - cast it in ceramics, drill a deep hole into old, stable rock, place it in the hole, and seal it. Oh, after reprocessing and using fast breeder reactors to reuse most of it. All we have to do is just do it - but it is too easy to raise pseudo-environmental and NIMBY anger to prevent it actually happening.

I seem to be locked into beta on my phone, and it just simply doesn't work. 3 comments down, and the comments are single-word lines, and a few more nested comments down, even that breaks. Even though I visit classic.slashdot.org, i end up at beta.

Look, someone with black-hat skills, track down their dev environment and rm -r it for us, please?

You've got your location wrong. The tidal range at Abbot Point is less than 4 meters.

http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanogr...

So you want them to dump the spoil closer to the reef???? The great barrier reef is about 75 km off the coast at Bowen, where this development is happening, and you'd need to travel twice that to be outside the boundaries of the marine park.

They have chosen a safe dumping zone where the movement of silt won't cause problems. But the entire east coast of Queensland, however, is the marine park, so all the safe dumping zones are inside the 'park'. So that means that GBRMPA has to check the details and make sure that what the engineers have worked out is a safe dumping zone is actually one, and that the currents won't take large quantities of fine silt onto reefs. They have done so, worked out that it is, and the world moves on.

Now whether anyone should be digging up coal and shipping it to places where it will be burnt is another matter. But the placement of the dredge spoil is simple engineering.

It is still there as an optional item in the installer, not selected by default (because that is the way it should be).

And that is the main problem. When an inventor files a patent, it should be totally specific. If that patent is rejected, they should have two options: Argue that the patent as it stands is valid, involving the courts if necessary, or toss it out, and create a new, correct patent with a new effective date.

And if the way a patent is written could be read to cover some prior art, either before or after it is approved, then the patent is wrong and should be tossed, entirely, unless that prior art was explicitly listed in the 'prior art' section.

So this patent application should be the recipient of a junior-clerk's REJECTED stamp, because it doesn't explicitly list the Satoshi paper in it's applicable prior art section.

'If you were going to say one of these, STOP! you are being boring! Think of something original to say, or shut up!"

The US has gone to war a number of times (it is claimed) to prevent countries trading oil in currencies other than the Dollar. Some of those claims might border on conspiracy theories, but it remains that the tactics to keep oil trading based on the U.S. Dollar look remarkably like 'force'.

Etymology note: Petroleum is latin for 'Rock Oil' (Petra, rock + Oleum, oil, from the Latin for Olive.). When we created that abbreviation, Petrodollars, dollars for oil, all that was left of the oil was the 'o'. The word looks more like 'Rock 'o Dollars, doesn't it?

I'd give it -3 overrated. And this thread has been interesting - I have learnt a few things about this that I wasn't quite aware of - such as the actor's guild conditions that prevented the recordings continued use, and so contributed to their destruction. I was aware of the official programs to recover missing copies, but am not surprised at BigBadBus' notes below about archivists lack of concern for the official programs.

Namely, destruction of all extant copies.

BBC destroyed the only copies of most of those episodes decades ago. The only existing copies are some that were sent overseas and temporarily lost, so they were not recovered and destroyed. Others only exist in the form of home-made speaker-to-microphone reel-to-reel audio tapes.