Comment Re:May I Be the First To Say This (Score 1) 130
Fuck perl,
python is one of the coolest languages ever!
There, fixed that for ya.
Happy to be of service.
Two Sunken Japanese Submarines Found Off Hawaii 239
Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that two World War II Japanese submarines, including one meant to carry aircraft for attacks on American cities, have been found in deep water off Hawaii where they were sunk in 1946. Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the US East Coast — perhaps targeting Washington, DC and New York City — the 'samurai subs' were fast, far-ranging, and some carried folding-wing aircraft. Five Japanese submarines were captured by American forces at the end of the war and taken to Pearl Harbor for study, then towed to sea and torpedoed, probably to avoid having to share any of their technology with the Russian military. One of the Japanese craft, the I-201, was covered with a rubberized coating on the hull, an innovation intended to make it less apparent to sonar or radar; it was capable of speeds of about 20 knots while submerged, making it among the fastest diesel submarines ever made. The other, the I-14, much larger and slower, was designed to carry two small planes, Aichi M6A Seirans that could be brought onto the deck and launched by a catapult. The submarines were meant to threaten the United States directly, but none of the attacks occurred because the subs were developed too late in the war, and American intelligence was too good. 'It's very moving to see objects like this underwater,' says Hans Van Tilburg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 'because it's a very peaceful environment, but these subs were designed for aggression.'"
Comment Re:V: The Thought Experiment. (Score 1) 708
You are close.. if they got here, they clearly have cheap, nearly unlimited power and are way beyond us technically. There's only one reason to stop... Jimi Hendrix.
If you think about it, you'll agree. They heard Jimi and said.. we've gotta check these hairy little biped mammals out.
Comment Summary Backwards (Score 5, Informative) 698
I read the FCC paper.. the summary is full of errors. The individual user does not get throttled until the entire CTMS port is in a congested state (that's 80% downstream, 70% upstream). And 'throttled' is a loose term.. if the bandwidth is available you get it. You are throttled if there are lower volume users on the shared pipe, and even then they just get a higher priority. Depending on how bad the congestion is, you might not even notice this.
Comment Re:Risk assessment (Score 1) 184
Trust me, the chances are good your sysadmin couldn't imagine you are trying to sucker him. He thinks that a) you are an idiot and b) he is a genius. He/she will never be convinced that either is false, when in fact usually both are.
There's a good (50/50) shot that the sysadmin in question does not even know what strings or strace do.
Comment Re:HP (Score 1) 557
I'll second this, for being dirt cheap these are great. I wanted a b&w printer to keep my kids from printing everything on the internet.
Comment Re:How? (Score 1) 188
Nine women can't have a baby in one month.
Comment Re:Why the hate towards bt? (Score 1) 69
I wonder if it has something to do with the support for BT in the base kernel source? I did some looking around, seems like it's well supported. Maybe there's more to that story though?
Robotic Mold 118
Canis Lupus writes to mention that researchers from the University of West England are designing the world's first biological robot, constructed from mold. The robot, "Plasmobot," will be created using vegetative slime mold called plasmodium (Physarum polycephalum) that is commonly found in forests, gardens, and most damp places in the UK. "This new plasmodium robot, called plasmobot, will sense objects, span them in the shortest and best way possible, and transport tiny objects along pre-programmed directions. The robots will have parallel inputs and outputs, a network of sensors and the number crunching power of super computers. The plasmobot will be controlled by spatial gradients of light, electro-magnetic fields and the characteristics of the substrate on which it is placed. It will be a fully controllable and programmable amorphous intelligent robot with an embedded massively parallel computer."
Comment Re:Solar at that distance? (Score 1) 185
Certainly from our sun.. might pass close enough to other stars to get power periodically (for very large values of period).
Comment Re:Wont the accleration decrease with distance (Score 1) 185
Maybe it won't stop.. after it passes whatever it was aimed at it will just keep sending data and traveling until it dies. Power problem? I guess those mars rovers are doing ok with solar.
Comment Re:In other news... (Score 1) 268
100% of the people don't have access to email.
Comment Re:They Just Don't Get It... (Score 1) 82
Apparently Google is still my friend...
Comment Re:They Just Don't Get It... (Score 1) 82
I'm not sure exactly what it was called.. but when I was very young I used to play a text based ST game on my Dad's mainframe terminal at home. It was awesome, you could discover planets and mine for dilithium crystals, do experimental things with your engines, and klingons would pop up from time to time to fight? Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
It supports your statement though... It would be a great candidate for a next-gen 'SimEarth' type of free-play exploration game.
Comment Chips (Score 1) 699
I find this a little disturbing in regards to the commercial unix space. It seems like Sun, IBM, and Intel are the only chipset manufacturers left. If sparc goes, your choices are IBM, Intel (Power, Itanium). If another company were to enter the chip market with something competetive, I would think there are enough Unix variants and forks that another one could arise. The software isn't really the problem, IMHO.
