Our species will survive past this one too.

Many of our civilizations did not survive past warming and cooling cycles, even though they often had more time to adapt than we're likely to get. The go-to explanation for "why did X civilization disappear" is "environmental factors."

I will. 250 million is 2.5 x 10^8. 7.6 sextillion is 7.6 x 10^21.

250 mg is 2.5 x 10^2 * 10^-6 kg = 2.5 x 10^-4 kg. 80 kg is 8 x 10^1 kg.

The difference in the first case is 21-8 = 13 orders of magnitude. The difference in the second case is 6-1 = 5 orders of magnitude, for a total difference of differences between examples of 13-5 = 8 orders of mangitude.

Your claim was "50,000 - 100,000 orders of magnitude off". Assuming the "-" is "to", that's 5 x 10^4 to 1 x 10^5 orders of magnitude.

I think it's safe to say you don't know what "order of magnitude" means.

True. You can soar on wind deflected upwards by hills or mountains too. I wouldn't recommend doing it on meth though.

You wouldn't believe what those younguns are getting up to in the darkroom.

This should allow them to finally catch bin Laden.

You can do lots of computing with one bit. Logic, for example. It's arithmetic where YMMV.

All of which is more or less irrelevant anyway. The Z80 has mostly 16-bit registers, a 4-bit ALU, and can do whatever precision math you want, so long as it fits in 64 KB. Unless you want to get creative.

You have made the rookie mistake of assuming the poster's commentary in the summary is in some way relevant. You'd think the first sentence would have tipped you off to their general position on the issue.

The actual government page says this:

The Motor Vehicle Act prohibits a person from driving, or permitting the driving of, a Level 3, 4 or 5 automated vehicle. This means that highly automated self-driving vehicles cannot yet be driven on public roads in B.C., nor can highly automated self-driving features be used, unless enabled through a pilot project under the Motor Vehicle Act or by regulation in the future.

Highly automated self-driving vehicles remain a new and emerging transportation technology. Further testing and policy development are necessary before Level 3 or higher automated vehicles are considered safe and can begin to be allowed for public use on B.C. roads.

So pretty much like everywhere else except for one car in California and Nevada.

I guess Nevada doesn't really have very many woods though, back or otherwise.

No, it's spoken like that dude who was driving 5 km/h under the speed limit but as soon as you try and pass him always seems to end up doing 20 over.

In another reply he says "I driven 18_wheelers coast to coast for years". So actually he adds some additional tricks to the repertoire like going 20 under up the hill, spending five minutes passing some other "18_wheeler", then hitting another hill and doing it all over again.

I think the other guy replied to you sufficiently. The world, and the things in it, are considerably more complicated than your American cold war us and them conditioning has lead you to believe.

I've not only watched it, I've done it personally. The birds aren't counteracting gravity, the hot air is. The birds are falling, slowly, with respect to the air.

It doesn't. Slashdotters on the other hand....

Their science wasn't all that bad. They were a bit off on a tricky measurement. Instead of studying it quietly for the next year or two, they made the mistake of telling their university, which instantly arranged a press conference. Once that happens you're pretty much screwed.

Unfortunately, if you've discovered something big but preliminary, you have to go back to the classic way of doing things. Send some letters to your best science buddies to get their opinion, while also swearing them to silence. When you're really sure, publish a really technical article to keep the journalists and Internet commentators away. When you're finally riding on a mass produced cold fusion powered reactionless spaceship, conceed that "well, perhaps our initial enthusiasm might have been warranted."

You don't need landing gear, gyroscopes, control fins or any of that stuff to demonstrate a hunk of teflon and foam hovering in a vacuum chamber. Or even just flying up off the floor.

I read the whole article and was disappointed that there was not one hovering doohickey video.

Nothing except the Slashdot headline seems to indicate they changed the story. They just edited some crappy snapshots. Aledgedly to hide whoever was slipping the filmmaker personal photos from a girl who tried to kill her parents.

Clearly we need a law. All TV shows must consist of slideshows of unedited crappy snapshots.