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Comment Re:Sigh (Score 1) 284

4. Why does Islam prohibit the consumption of pork? Does the holy Q'uran consider that cannibalism?

The general rule is basically that only herbivores may be eaten. Not that bad an idea if you consider the larger risk of diseases and parasites as well as the energy gone to waste if there are additional steps in the food chain.

Chickens are omnivores, just like pigs. The other day I saw a chicken eat a dead mouse (in a TV program where some English guy investigates behavior and intelligence of farm animals).

Comment Re:Uhg... (Score 1) 612

Silly. U2's and SR71's were made redundant by satellites many decades ago. And would you prefer that the Iranians had a captured pilot along with their captured plane? OTOH if they're using UAVs, they're probably doing something that they can't do from a satellite.

Comment Re:No (Score 4, Insightful) 263

From TFA:
"The plutonium was in an oxide form about one-tenth of a millimeter in diameter contained in fuel capsule, which itself was inside a graphite and ceramic fuel cask." - Leonard Dudzinski, a NASA program executive.

Is this another example of a NASA guy who doesn't understand metric units, or is the plutonium RTG really just a sphere not much wider than a hair?

Comment Re:Only "troubled" if you're not Lockheed Martin (Score 1) 509

The F-35 is a strike fighter. Its job is to blow up various ground targets, and it does this better than the F-22. Again, that is its mission and what it was built to do.

And yet the F-35 is supposed to replace the F-16 on the export market. So many of America's allies are supposed to use this extremely expensive, dedicated bomber/strike-aircraft, as their primary self defense/air defense assert?

Comment Re:Agree (Score 1) 548

If the illegal drugs were legalized, you could grow cocain, opium and weed in your garden or greenhouse. And you could probably hire some redneck wizzkid to make meth-amphetamine for you. My point is that the drugs would be extremely cheap to produce in bulk (and users could make their own), and therefore there wouldn't be much money in trading them. Your ruthless drug lords would go bankrupt.

Comment Re:Wait for it... (Score 1) 327

How many people actually believed that WMDs were the anything other than an excuse for starting that war? Back in 2003, most of those who were against the war certainly wasn't buying the WMD story. And I'm pretty sure that most of those who were in favor of the war, wanted it regardless of whether Saddam had a few WMD toys or not.

I've always thought that the WMD story was an excuse that nobody actually believed in. (To clarify: In 2003 some people may have believed that Saddam had a few WMDs, but nobody believed that those weapons were the real reason we invaded.)

Comment Re:PHK wide of the mark (Score 1) 594

I think that the point TFA is trying to make is, that the world would be a better place, if the NULL terminated C-string didn't exist.

Personally, I agree with that sentiment. Because a lot of people, including me, are sloppy, lazy coders...

Also, I think that PHK distinctly says that he doesn't blame anyone for the giant one-byte mistake.

Comment Re:Mixed Feelings (Score 1) 409

The Slashdot thread is long dead now, but I can still reply to you:

Yes, but Kepler is a relatively small and cheap telescope that's scheduled to die later next year. And it hasn't found anything really interesting yet (interesting in the context of an ET biology discovery).

In my opinion, attempts to find biological life on a planet outside our solar system. Is much more important than all the other research that NASA does. The robot cars that drive around on Mars are cute, and the pictures that the Cassini–Huygens send back from Saturn are pretty. But a space telescope finding ET life (even if it's just some spectral lines that has to be interpreted by astronomists), would shake the world. So my point is: huge, complicated, difficult, expensive space telescopes, should be the main focus of NASA's efforts. (my 2 cents, anyway. does 2 cents help?)

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