Consider for a moment that the sphere of a high orbit is larger than the size of the earth. Then consider all the orbital altitudes (like layers of an onion) which need to be "scoured", and you're talking about an amount of space that is many times the total surface area of Earth.

That's a whole lot of territory to cover, even for a large army of scour-ers.

As someone who works in space flight hardware, I will state what I think is obvious to most slashdotters: These are not just "consumer grade electronics." True, they were based heavily or solely on an existing consumer product, but they have to meet a very stringent set of requirements to operate in space. *They need to cool themselves effectively despite having no gravity, which means heat doesn't rise and you lose all naturally convective heating *They need to be radiation hardened to mitigate against bit flips and the like due to radiation particles *They need to meet specific reliability and usability requirements driven by spaceflight And lastly, with everyone complaining about how the government wastes money, do you really expect that it would be better for NASA to contract out development, design, testing and building of a one-off product (laptop, camera, MP3 player, camcorder, PDA, etc) where it isn't necessary?

It occurs to me to wonder if a person who is strong-willed and motivated enough to take the trouble to skip commercials on a DVR, is of the sort who weren't listening to the commercials anyway even if they did occasionally stare at the screen during commercial breaks before the era of DVR, and further, whether the sort of person who passively listens to commercials with or without a DVR is the sort of person who tends to be influenced by commercials with which to begin. Perhaps worried advertisers and network executives realistically aren't losing nearly as much of their actual, receptive (if hard to measure) audience(s) as they fear.

You're right that it is common for maintenance, but its not as hard when equipment is being *replaced* instead of *added.*

The camera is one thing, then you need the cables, the recorder, etc. An A&P needs to amend the weight and balance sheet for every aircraft modified and add an appendix to the manual with all the data for the camera system. The AOM for every aircraft has a weight and balance sheet specific to that airframe. Alterations to the aircraft require recalculation and signoff by an A&P. This is because not every aircraft is identical; there are manufacturing defects and repairs that make them all unique. The math isn't hard, getting the mechanic to have to do all the work and paperwork is expensive though. Changing the CG and useful load (which is exactly what adding a camera system would do) is not a trivial task. Remember what a PITA it was to get armored cockpit doors...

anything on non fatal accidents.

They are probably down too - at least in London, the reason for the decline is that the blocking of "rat runs" means that the slightest minor accident blocks the main road completely for several hours.

I live on the edge of the Olympic Park, and no one here thinks that people will be able to get to the Olympics through traffic jams. A relatively minor incident on day one will close all of East London for at least three weeks. A journey that takes me 15 minutes walking, recently took me 2 hours by car. A burst watermain typically causes a 20 mile tailback for several days with a deep recession and no Olympics.

Unfortunately the truck in front of me only moved forward 2 car lengths, and then suddenly stopped to make a turn. He did not have his turn signal on, but he stopped anyway. I was caught off guard.

Where do you live that somebody not using a turn signal "catches you off guard?" Where I am, in Washington State, you're lucky if half the cars on the road use their turn signals... it's not the kind of thing you can rely on for safe driving.

Also: I hope you got ticketed for it. The point of eating your fritter when it's safe is that it has to be WHEN IT'S SAFE! If you have your foot on the gas pedal, it's not safe. In fact by multi-tasking (putting the fritter down while attempting to drive forward) you were probably more dangerous to the truck than if you'd just held your fritter on the left hand and drove normally.

Now, if only we could ensure that ALL military hardware had kill switches, and that everybody on the planet knew how to use them.

The best proof of this is that small countries buy military technology from larger countries.

I didn't know Belgium was a large country. Switzerland is also big? As is Israel?

Falcon

Have you been trying the 4.x series? In the early releases 4.0-4.2.x a lot of KDE 3 series functionality was missing because they just rushed it out of the door. Starting with KDE 4.3.x and beyond things are starting to get back on track. Maybe you need to give KDE 4.4 a try when it comes out...

Gnome ehm... is just for the majority of users I guess. I personally stepped off the cool and sexy bandwagon and started using E16 because the only thing I really want to do with my OS anyway is connecting to the internet, adjust the volume, look at the time and date and run applications and that at the speed you'd expect computers to have in this day and age...

This is ofcourse just personal because I don't think that there are a lot of Enlightenment users out there, let alone version 16 users :P

That is essentially it, as long as the value proposition (works like a DVR, commercials don't run longer than skipping through commercials on a DVR take, the price is the cost of internet access instead of internet + TV) then migration will happen;

Let say a reasonable HTPC w/ 1080p display costs $1500 and cable with a DVR costs $60 a month, hulu pays for your HTPC w/ new HDTV in about 2 years; Add to that a $5 a month fee for what used to be $15 a month HBO and hulu charging for premium content: Hulu w/ service, after the second year, saves the consumer ~ $850 a year

I have always disliked getting coffee in a styrofoam cup that is way too hot to drink. I always drink my coffee black, so nothing is added to cool it down. The styrofoam cups at fast food places keep the coffee way too hot, much longer than a ceramic coffee cup would have. If the coffee at an ordinary restaurant is too hot, it will quickly cool off somewhat in the ceramic cup and saucer they use.

I do not like having to sit around, for a few minutes, waiting for the coffee to cool down before I can drink it. After several minutes, I usually get impatient and start cautiously trying to sip the still way too hot coffee. The next day, I have usually discovered that my tongue was sore from having been burned by the super hot coffee. After a couple of days, the soreness of portions of my tongue and roof of my mouth, goes away.

Usually, the way too hot coffee from fast food places smells disgusting. Instead of having that wonderful rich coffee aroma, it usually has that strong disgusting overcooked, burnt smell, typical of coffee made several hours ago, but constantly kept hot for several hours. When I finally get around to cautiously taking my first sip, I usually discover that it tastes even worse than it smells, so I throw it away. People who use cream or sugar, might have possibly have been able to make it taste minimally acceptable.

If fast food place can not provide fresh good smelling and good tasting coffee, I wish they would just not even offer it on the menu.

A few years back I did this with a colleague, we actually investigated 3 solutions; 2 commercial and one linux script based, in the end the one that won easily was the Linux script.

Basically using iproute2 and some nice scripts gives you the ability to load balance your outbound packets and then using some relatively simple scripts to monitor each remote peer for automatic failover.

A quick google turns up this blogger who sounds (from a quick skim) like he's doing the same thing: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-load-balancing-failover-with-dual-multi-wan-adsl-cable-connections-on-linux/

Unfortunately I can't remember the commercial solutions we tested (this was 4-5 years ago!), but although they did exactly what you wanted perfectly, our problem was that we were doing this for a managed services company who ran 150+ IPSEC VPN's over those (at the time) 3 bonded ADSL connections, needless to say the commercial solutions had never imagined anyone trying to statefully balance that many VPNs! However with some tweaking (to be honest a LOT of tweaking) we got the Linux solution working a treat, even with nearly seamless failover.

Google is your friend on this one.

The more there are pie-in-the-sky technologies out there that have been researched over many years, the more promising and immediately useful (if currently marginally feasible) technologies there will be on hand to frantically improve at the last minute when ever-growing demand for energy peaks and readily available oil has become unaffordable for less important applications. Algae is particularly promising because it relies on a billion years of evolution focussed on minimal-energy solutions to extracting power from sunlight, and because it has relatively little background pollution associated with it (as compared to the array of toxic chemicals used to manufacture solar cells, for example). Plus, understanding of genetic engineering can only improve greatly.

I still strongly prefer nuclear energy (safe fission designs for now, fusion later if that ever gets off the ground), but the political controversy surrounding nuclear power plants appears set to make nuclear energy a minor part of future energy provisions. Algae looks to be uncontroversial and usable everywhere there is decent sunlight, with almost no toxic chemicals or proliferation concerns.

The point isn't whether the flu vaccine is necessary or not. The point is you are mandated to get it if you work in a NYS article 28 facility (section 205 of the NYS public health law specifically) you are forced to get this shot if you want to keep your job. This includes care agencies, Hospitals, Nursing homes etc...

Is the vaccine safe, who knows? They just started clinical trials. This is the problem Health care workers are being forced into the clinical trial. I know for a fact that it is not FDA approved yet, and because it is a vaccine for a "pandemic" disease it is allowed to bend the rules of acceptable ingredients. The mercury content of the vaccine is higher than normally allowed. available here While a healthy male may have no problem with this, how about a pregnant female? Some of the ingredients are known to worsen thyroid conditions . The problem is no one really knows what will happen.

Also why mandate the swine flu shot but not the regular flu shot. 12% of people die from the flu every year (CDC reports) yet as of June of 2009 the swine flu has about a 6% mortality rate (Again CDC reports).

This disease is less deadly than most other strains of the flu yet there is panic over it. The big deal is while the normal flu may put you out of commission for 3 days the swine flu can knock you out for 6 days to 2 weeks.

The CDC is not mandating health care workers get the shot, only NYS is. Plus you have to sign multiple wavers that you won't sue anyone should you end up sick from it. Basically you are given the choice of playing Russian roulette or lose your job. You have a 1 in 6 chance of getting the bullet but if you get the bullet your chances don't matter you are stuck with the reality. A lot of the people educating people on the Vaccine when asked if they will get it, turn around and say no. How can they truthfully educate people on how safe this vaccine is if they refuse to get it?

I know in Manhattan on Oct 13 an injunction is being filed by PATRICIA FINN on behalf of all health care workers, and it may go class action suit if the injunction is approved.

Fyi I just gave a lecture on swine flu and have a ton more info if any one wants it, most of it is available off CDC websites though.

EM is all fine and good, but you cant just stick things into it like you can a light microscope. Sample prep is very complex. Unless these kids have several rather nasty solvents to fix the sample, and a high-pressure liquid CO2 bomb to remove excess liquids, not to mention a sputter-coater, there is nothing you can do with it. Sounds like a waste of money for schools to buy this. Better to buy 200 decent light-scopes and let kids play with it individually than watch the teacher put a prepared sample into a tube and look at a computer screen.