from the cum-grano-salis dept.
Rockets.

Mount rockets at selected points on the earth's crust, and use them to move it all around so that pesky hot spot is under a region too thick for the molten rock to penetrate. It's projected to move under such a spot in a few million years or so anyway; why not accelerate the process?

Possible caveats:

• This may relocate other hot spots to more dangerous locations.
• The massive acceleration may enlarge minor or hitherto unknown faults in the earth's crust.
• Failure to produce uniform acceleration worldwide may cause tectonic plates to slam into each other and bounce around like bumper cars, triggering major earthquakes around the globe.
• It may be difficult to procure the necessary size and quantity of rockets, or to securely attach them to the crust at the appointed locations, and the huge amounts of exhaust generated may cause additional problems.
• I may not, in fact, have any idea what I'm talking about.

Discuss.

from the I-will-never-understand-this-'decimal'-nonsense- if-I-live-to-be-C! dept.
I turn 21 today (hint, hint). This whole aging thing is already getting on my nerves.

from the and-change-the-combination-on-my-luggage dept.
Why the hell doesn't anybody issue randomly-generated passwords with new accounts anymore?

And don't even get me started on those asshats who make you pick a "security question" from a stupid little drop-down list.

from the boreholio dept.
Dumping this here just for the hell of it. Would be more readable if I didn't have to work around the stupid filter.

Overall Structure
-----------------
Bytes 0001 - 0010 : ASCIIZ : "TERRANMAP"
Bytes 0011 - 0015 : -????- : 1A 05 00 00 00
Bytes 0016 - 0019 : INT-32 : Width
Bytes 0020 - 0023 : INT-32 : Height
Bytes 0024 - 0043 : -????- : ???
Byte: 0044 - ---- : -????- : 01 = flat map
Bytes 0045 - 0047 : -????- : ???
Bytes 0048 - 0051 : INT-32 : LabelCount
Bytes 0052 - 2611 : STRUCT : array(1..64) of Label
Bytes 2612 - 2651 : -????- : ???
Bytes 2652 - 2731 : ASCIIZ : Filename
Bytes 2732 - 2739 : -????- : ???
Bytes 2740 - ???? : STRUCT : array(1..(Height), 1..(Width / 2)) of MapData
Bytes ???? - EOF. : -????- : Landmass ID map?


Label Struct
------------
Bytes 01 - 04 : INT-32 : X
Bytes 05 - 08 : INT-32 : Y
Bytes 09 - 40 : ASCIIZ : Label text


MapData Struct
--------------
Byte: 01 : BITS : Flags:

• 00001000 = Moist
• 00010000 = Rainy
• 00100000 = Ocean
• 01000000 = Ocean Shelf
• 01100000 = Just above sea level
• 10000000 = One level above sea level
• 10100000 = Two levels above sea level
• 11000000 = Three levels above sea level
• 11100000 = Four levels above sea level

Byte: 02 - -- : BYTE : Altitude (0x3C = 10m; lower values are depth)
Bytes 03 - 04 : ???? : ???
Byte: 05 - -- : BYTE : 0x00
Byte: 06 - -- : BITS : Flags:

• 01000000 = Rolling
• 10000000 = Rocky

Byte: 07 - -- : ???? : ???
Byte: 08 - -- : BYTE : Tile owner (should be 0xFF)
Bytes 09 - 12 : BITS : Flags:

• 00 00 00 01 = Borehole
• 00 00 00 10 = Pod?
• 00 00 00 80 = Sensor
• 00 00 04 00 = Airbase
• 00 00 10 00 = Landmark?
• 00 00 20 00 = Forest
• 00 00 40 00 = Condenser
• 00 00 80 00 = Mirror
• 00 01 00 00 = River source/Aquifer
• 00 04 00 20 = Nutrients
• 00 04 01 20 = Energy
• 00 04 02 20 = Minerals
• 00 08 00 00 = Bunker
• 00 20 00 00 = Monolith
• 00 80 00 00 = Farm/Kelp
• 00 80 08 00 = Farm, Enricher
• 04 00 00 00 = Road
• 0C 00 00 00 = Tube
• 10 00 00 00 = Mine
• 20 00 00 00 = Fungus
• 40 00 00 00 = Solar/Tidal
• 80 00 00 00 = River?

Bytes 13 - 14 : BITS : Flags:

• 00 01 = Mesa
• 00 04 = Geothermal Shallows
• 00 10 = Cluster Borehole
• 00 20 = Nexus
• 01 00 = Crater
• 04 00 = Jungle
• 08 00 = Uranium
• 40 00 = Desert
• 80 00 = Fresh water (sea); ??? (land)

Byte: 15 . -- : BYTE : 0x40
Byte: 16 . -- : BYTE : Art ref?
Bytes 17 - 44 : BITS : array(1..7) of INT32 = (Flags2 AND 7F FF FF FF)

from the smart(m)asses dept.
That ThinkGeek banner made me laugh, but I still like this version better. To be anal, though, violets are more like #8000FF; that sort of electric purply-indigo color halfway between blue and magenta that almost hurts your eyes.

"If you see it, you should want to lick it."

from the whatever-it-is-that-they-write-it-on-up-there dept.
Dear Canada,

Owing to recent increases in heating costs, we must ask that you suspend all shipments of cold air for the next several months.

Respectfully Yours,
The United States of America

P.S. Our words are backed by nuclear weapons.

from the push-the-button-frank dept.
There has got to be a better way to arrange Slashboxes than moving one single box up or down one space at a time using those dinky little arrows.

from the food-for-thought dept.
Why are (brand-name) Frosted Mini-Wheats bigger than (generic, non-mini-) Frosted Shredded Wheats?

Was there a memo about this that I missed?

from the ian,-this-is-unacceptable dept.
I just tried the new Freenet with "next generation routing," and thus far have seen little or no improvement over the situation described in my last entry. While it seems to pay more attention to connection limits this time, it still causes the same weird behavior in internet apps, and thus cannot be run in the background without driving me batshit insane. I'll wait for the next version; thanks anyway.

from the the-price-of-freedom-is-eternal-torment dept.
C:\WINDOWS>netstat -n | wc -l
40

C:\WINDOWS>GOOD HELL!
Bad command or file name

This is after limiting Freenet to 20 connections due to the ongoing Winsock-monopolizing spree it's been on since the previously-journalled Slashdotting.

Note that although the number above is inflated by 3 lines of headers, 2 fproxy connections, and a partridge in a pear tree, that still leaves over 30 connections.