I'm wondering if it's even worth changing the comment threshold here to 3.

Seconded. Coincidentally, just a few weeks ago I was pseudo-randomly websurfing and came upon the wikipedia articles about the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. I easily spent two evenings reading about those journeys and the men - and animals - that undertook them. Fascinating stuff.

One of the participants in one of the expeditions was Apsley Cherry-Garrard. He subsequently wrote a book, "The Worst Journey In The World", which is on Project Gutenberg's site http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14363 In the preface of the book he wrote a semi-famous couple of lines

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

After reading about Shackleton's harrowing Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition it's not surprising that the IAU named a crater on the Moon for him. Shackleton didn't fuck around. When he said he was coming back for you, by god he was coming back for you.

That is their new business plan. Verizon is dumping all their old POTS copper wire business in regions where they (previously) offer landline service. They have stopped rolling out FiOS fiber-to-the-home pretty much everywhere. Their stated reasoning, believe it or not, is they can make more money on wireless overage charges. It's not a matter of POTS landlines and FiOS not being profitable. It's a matter of them not being profitable enough.

That did cause quite an uproar at the time. MS did an elaborate tapdance around the issue and denied it was anything at all like its name. Many people saw it as proof that Windows crypto was fundamentally flawed while many others insisted it was nothing to worry about.

I'm surprised nobody has gone back and looked at that whole episode anew in light of recent disclosures.

Digitized versions of actors and actresses will be substituted for the real-life things. Humphrey Bogart and Lana Turner will make huge comebacks in virtual form. And without all that pesky union BS that goes along with card carrying members of SAG. Audiences won't be able to tell the difference between virtual clones and the real thing. Eventually the fake replacements will garner perpetual fan bases of their own. First they came for the real musicians...

Because that's when this story first made the rounds. It was first mentioned on 8 October in the highly-regarded AVS Forums http://www.avsforum.com/t/1494093/panasonic-to-end-plasma-panel-production-by-april-2014

So tired of getting stale "news" here lately. If /. went dark tomorrow I think I'd miss it less than I'm going to miss Panny plasmas.

Not to denigrate any of the other projects going on, but I thought this was brilliant. Maybe you have to be as old as I am to appreciate it. I was a little kid when TOS first aired and it will forever be my favorite Star Trek series. These guys did a marvelous job of lighting, sound, cliches (Kirk with his shirt off, anyone?) sets, dialogue, story, beats and pauses between scenes (for the "commercials"). I can't complain about the acting. Their casting choices were probably very much dictated by happenstance, enthusiasm and luck of the draw.

I think Gene Roddenberry would have approved.

Railroad Tycoon

Still has never been outdone in the genre. Transport Tycoon, additional editions of RRT, not even the latest Rails, which I believe Sid lent his name to without really being involved.... none of them can hold a candle to the original Railroad Tycoon.

In my experience, when a "Can't Miss" deal like this goes bad, the probability that one side will do something sleazy is directly proportional to how friendly the parties were at the outset.

In EvE there are no "1-hour timers" on any wormholes. This kind of throws the rest of your paean into the "unreliable info" category.

As long as 'performant' and 'documentate' are banished.

B5 went through a shaky period with its off-again on-again fifth season due to a change of networks. What I'm asking about, however, is the trend of popular cable programs to adopt irregular and seemingly bizzare scheduling practices. Every few months it seemed like The Sopranos was taking another year off. Later, Battlestar Galactica was just as bad, leaving fans to wonder when they'd ever get to see a new episode again or even what season they were watching.

Do you think that kind of scheduling can hurt a program? I know more than a few people who swore off both of those shows after they started to mess around with the scheduling. I stuck with them, but was tempted to jump ship myself on numerous occasions. It's an extremely aggravating practice that, to me, tells the audience that they don't matter. Do you have any thoughts on the need, or lack thereof, for a consistent and predictable schedule?

This post is full of fail. From the part about C compilers to the part about "no protected memory" to the part about IBM never supporting "anything else on their iron".

Occasionally an AC will post something worthy of modding up to +5. This ain't one of them, folks.

I'll put your grandfather's dozen friends up against anyone else's thousands when the chips are down.

I guess I'm in the minority here, too, since I didn't like Cryptonomicum at all. It was OK but at this point I don't even remember what the plot was, never mind the characters.