Was Scrat's acorn in there too? Did the poor little guy ever get his treasure?

This sounds perfectly good to me. If someone has voluntarily chosen to become an infectious disease vector I'd consider it a positive if my doctor barred them from their practice.

Retail store decided to move the main front counter of the store. It wasn't permanently fixed to the flooring, but was hard-wired in with electrical and serial connections (serial terminals and printers). The decided it would be okay to just put eight people to work and lift the whole thing at once to drag it over about a foot. With the serial terminals and printers on it. Plugged in. Turned on.

After a couple inches they got a nice *POP POP POP* and puff of smoke off each piece of gear. Not just on the counter, but every piece of gear in the entire store, including the server. We had to send someone in a truck 400 miles with an entire store worth of new gear.

Once I got the server back in my hands, I saw pretty good evidence of what happened. When I opened it up, half of the multi-port serial card was burned out. Most of the ICs were literally vaporized, some to the point of leaving burn marks in the bottom of the case as well.

The best we can guess was that hot and perhaps ground on the incoming electrical Romex into the counter were shorted together, frying the gear on the counter, and sending the surge back through the serial connection (done over CAT5) to the server, and managed to get back out of the serial card to all the other gear in the store before the connections vaporized. The CAT5, however, seemed to have fared well with no obvious damage.

Well, time for a new web host. No way will I continue to support them.

Actually I think this was probably a direct reference to the the TAM conference panel on the future of space travel. Phil was the moderator there rather than a panelist (who the hell made that choice?). I was really hoping Phil would get to speak more in that panel, but even when audience members specifically asked for his response as well he never really got a chance to respond.

Sorry, TAM panel, not TAMS!

Hi, Phil. I saw the video of the TAMS panel on the future of space exploration that you moderated. Whose dim-whited idea was it to make you a moderator and not a panelist?

Once you go Green, do you ever go back?

Just think about it... Microsoft has probably made the biggest improvement to their software in two decades... You can now reboot far faster than ever before! Just think about the time saved per week for your average Windows user!

I'm sure that's about as valid as other unusual laws that are, in theory, still on the books--can't play hopscotch on a Sunday, can't dress a donkey in a sundress in rainy weather, etc.

And of course he's been watching Game of Thrones... he even said that in his blog post!

(Off topic: This is probably the best book adaptation to film/tv I've ever seen, well beyond even Lord of the Rings or the Sci-Fi mini series version of Dune and Children of Dune. Those have been my yardsticks to measure other adaptations by for a while now. I do think that people who haven't read the books are at a serious disadvantage, though, as too much background is missing due to time constraints.)

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised. I think I submitted it less than three hours ago, too.

Of course law enforcement wants yet another invasion on the public's rights!

If law enforcement had its way every person would have a surgically attached collar with GPS, microphones and cameras, and tampering it would trigger explosives (which could also be set off remotely at any time--without a judge's order, of course--by any LEO).

Then again, it worked for the Barast...

Not just materials to build, but materials to sustain. Perhaps if the stations were built on planets (habitable or not) then this would be feasible. Without it you'd just have a massive string of floating space stations that need a constant stream of resources, no matter how sustainable they try to be.

Hmm I guess I missed that part. I saw the comment about completing within a human lifetime and went with the assumption from that point.

Either way, a manned mission and colony is really the path for us to take.