Interesting. Thank you for the explanation.

This also ignores how such a body could form, certainly beyond my creativity to imagine.

Yeah, I suppose that's the main problem.

Really, just because of the diameter? I admit that sounds counter-intuitive to me but then I'm not a physicist.

The tag-substitution gobbldy-gook encourages all kinds of bad page-development practices.

That "gobbldy-gook" generates valid XHTML, if you tell it to.

templating taglibs seen in JSP

Bwahaha... sorry. There are better templating engines than ASP.NET 2.0, but JSP is not one of them - not in a million years.

Obviously because of growth through the years. The same file in 2001 was pretty much empty as well.

No, but you're missing my point. Of course if you take Earth and make it 10x larger then it will have 10x the mass, and therefore you'll experience 10x the acceleration at surface level, assuming no variations in rotational speed (acceleration in the opposite direction). That will be hard on your joints, to say the least.

What I'm theorizing about is a planet whose geological structure makes it have *less* mass, and therefore generate the same gravitational field as Earth (1g), while at the same time increasing the effective surface by the same amount of relative size. Not mass.

Perhaps it's a planet where the majority of the crust is some sort of very strong honeycomb-like structure, maybe more lightweight material (like pumice?) with a smaller iron core or something like that.

Since the strength of the gravitational field of a planet is a factor of its mass, and the gravitational pull on the surface is in direct relation to the distance from the center of the planet... could it not be possible to have a planet the size of say, Neptune, with a geological makeup similar to the Earth, that has a lower mass and therefore the acceleration at the surface is exactly 1g (as we understand it here on Earth). That is within the bounds of physics, is it not?

Or maybe the effective gravity is stronger, but the planet spins faster. Faster days as well?

The problem I guess would be the existence of a formation process that actually creates a planet with such a large surface but happens to be mostly rock instead of mostly gas (supposedly gas giants are "failed stars"). If it has a molten iron core, would it not collapse in on itself?

Interesting, imagine a planet with the surface composition and atmosphere of Earth (and supposedly biomass) but 10 or more times the surface. That would be amazing.

As if the frakin' telecommunications industry in this country wasn't crap enough compared to Europe and Asia.

Way to go.

Interesting, I didn't realize they were so "fragile", so to speak. Thank you for the explanation.

I have no idea what the MTBF is on these things, but is the expectation of a shortened life because of the additional write activity really that much of a concern?

What bothers me about Vista 64 is that Microsoft do not let you load unsigned drivers.

Agreed. On the other hand, "normal" consumers don't usually run it anyway.

And then you'd have more people get on Slashdot and post the usual "OMFG Vista bluescreened HAHAHA LOLOL" comments, conveniently ignoring the fact that Microsoft told them not to load unsigned/untested drivers.

Somebody think up something that includes the term "beleaguered".

Hypothermia can kill you even if you're not at 14K feet. There's a stage where you actually feel *warm*, like you're burning up. I've felt it. And while not as pronounced as the high/low you get from hypoxia, it can also leave you impaired to make wonderfully stupid decisions that can get you killed.

Sunday night + Something vaguely criticizing Microsoft == Slashdot Front Page