I don't get why we aren't doing more with space-based solar. I'm no physicist, but it seems like you should be able to launch 4 or 6 fairly-equidistant satellites with solar collectors into orbit somewhere around the equator, and you have fully fault-tolerant/redundant 24 hour a day power that you can beam down to regional distribution points via microwave, which then uses the existing power grids to get it where it is needed. This provides a big enough chunk of the required energy for the planet, and OPEC countries become just competing providers, not a defacto energy monopoly bloc that they are.

Then we can move on to having wars over something else, like clean water, the next limited, mismanaged resource.

If you thought that solving the oil problem would stop wars, think again. We're human - we're really good at killing other humans. It's our thing, yo. In light of that, my dream is that one day, our wars, instead of being about tragic-yet-understandable resource management and distribution, are about utterly ridiculous things. I hope my kids or grandkids are around when Fox News is trying to pin the great Boxers vs Briefs vs Commando war (World War 6) on the Clinton Administration. Or maybe Al Jazeera reports that the Big Endians are regrouping after a deadly surprise attack by the Little Endians in the Where-to-break-open-your-eggs war that is now going into its third year in Southeast Asia.

Maybe, just maybe, in the year 3019, future generations will have a war over whether we should execute Dick Cheney with a firing squad or by hanging. Yes, he'll still be around then, causing mischief. If you don't like it, then YOU get off your ass and find the rest of the horcruxes.

But I digress - space-based solar beats the pants off terrestrial solar, what with no silly clouds and atmosphere to get in the way, not having to worry about a lack of sunny days, and a host of other reasons I can't think of right now.

Can some smart person of science who actually knows what they are talking about comment on whether this is a crazy argument?

His father's name is Yakov Perelman, but not THE Yakov Perelman. Although when he was a kid, his dad gave him a copy of Physics for Entertainment.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Perelman:

He is not related to the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman, who was born in 1966 to a different Yakov Perelman. However, Grigori Perelman told The New Yorker that his father gave him Physics for Entertainment, and it inspired his interest in mathematics.

Small freakin' world.

Actually from what I've heard, Jesus is like most other guys - he probably won't come more than once; rather he will probably just roll over and go to sleep. His brother Ricardo, on the other hand, I hear he's a stallion and just keeps going....

Newton - FreeBSD
Leibniz - Solaris
Donny from the Big Lebowski - QNX
Phil Hartman - BeOS
Moses - OS2/Warp
Hammurabi - MS DOS 5
Rush Limbaugh - Windows Vista

Chris Chandler can't be a folk singer - he doesn't do "folk songs".

Like many of you, I haven't built a box in a while because what I have now still works fine and my needs haven't grown enough to deal with the hassle of getting current with the newest tech. While reading this discussion I happened to revisit Pricewatch, just to see what their offerings look like and see how much stuff costs and so forth. This led to this very uh... interesting discovery. When the hell did THIS happen?

I believe this adds a whole new dimension to the compatibility and benchmark question...

awesome... at the same time I saw this comment, the music shuffle Gods decided it was time for Rob Base and "it takes too". Ah, memories...

For the Barry White effect to work properly, you need dimmed lights and scented candles. You can get the dimmed lights in the aquarium, but the candles will be a challenge.

The fools at the Academy for the Slightly Evil laughed at me when I introduced my doctoral dissertation proposal last month, but now look, the winds are shifting in my favor! This is going to go far to aid my goal of getting as many batteries as possible into the landfills that service Los Angeles and New York.

1. Average Joe gets/reads/disposes of newspaper
2. Batteries get dumped along with newspaper
3. ???
4. Profit!

Looks like I WILL get my D.Ev after all!

wow - I read that at first as "enema" and was very concerned.

This is slashdot, so nitpicking is called for when you get to a subject as holy as Douglas Adams. He only had one s in his first name. His parents weren't bestselling authors and so could only afford a single 's'.
Of course, I do see a Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzle here: Frederick D_uglass Adams.