I thought this theory had been explored and exploited quite well when the moral of "Independence Day" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/ was:

Connect a Mac to any network (even advanced alien invaders) and it WILL crash.

I like it. That seems much more sensible than de-orbiting several tons of potentially useful material.

I didn't say anything about completely escaping Earth's gravity. I mentioned a parking orbit, which could just be higher and "out of the way" of all the LEO stuff. It just seems like it must be cheaper to park the ISS higher and recycle it than it will be to put that much mass back into orbit again later.

It seems to me that we humans should be trying to design something that can recycle and use all those valuable raw materials for other orbital projects. After all, doesn't it cost huge amounts of money for every kilogram lifted to even low orbit? Might it not be more cost effective to create an orbital forge (for lack of a better term) to convert all that into parts for the next station? And if it needs to go to a parking orbit, it still seems cheaper to send up some orbital maneuvering engines for it than to simply dump it as waste into an already polluted ocean. I'm sure this wouldn't be easy, but it might provide some jobs for the thousands of people out of work around here (I live near Cape Canaveral, FL -- we've got a surplus of unemployed NASA/United Space Alliance engineers at the moment) and it might even save lots of money in the long run.

In my 25+ years in the software biz (with barely an AS degree) I've needed to help out on projects designed and built by CS PhDs. The designers often had little comprehension of the "real world" -- at least how it would interact with and affect their software and/or how users would do the same. My boss brought me to design meetings to take notes and afterwards, he'd clean up my questions and send them to the PhDs, often resulting in significant redesign.

It wasn't that those folks weren't smart and didn't know how to make the computers jump through hoops. It was more like they had blinders on to some of the real world issues (even simple things like dealing with power failure and recovery) and those blinders seemed, in many ways, to be a result of their advanced training. In a sense, they'd gotten so far into the theoretical, that they'd forgotten (or lost contact with) the practical.

IMHO, it isn't that college is a waste of time and money, it is just that a well rounded team often needs someone not encumbered with too much knowledge but who can still ask pertinent questions to keep a design grounded. (smiling) Basically, every big project needs someone like me!

The author of the piece doesn't seem to "get" some of the characters. For example, Gandalf states that he's walked Middle-Earth for 3000 lives of men, indicating that he's quite likely immortal (and the Silmarillion explains more of his origin/status for anyone who cares); Wolverine is supposed to be able to heal from virtually any injury, so why not a mere bullet to the head (though I liked that in his prequel his memory didn't heal with his flesh); and in supernatural shows (Buffy, Angel, Supernatural, etc.) death is only one state of being and characters often transition to/from it. And while he mentioned Torchwood, it was interesting that he totally ignored Jack, who is immortal, but often seemed to get killed in both Torchwood and Dr Who.

The "death isn't real" issue is a problem in actual science fiction as opposed to fantasy/supernatural fiction, where it is often expected. In science fiction stories there may be some super tech that can restore life like a chocolate coated pill for a mostly dead character can do in a fantasy story. But in general, TV shows are using the "important character death" hook far too often, especially since it is almost invariably followed by the equivalent of, "April Fools! Thanks for the great ratings during sweeps!"

I've lived in the USA all my life. I don't know all that many people, but I'd be surprised if ONE in four of them is on facebook, at least based on those I communicate with regularly. Or many of them are lying (oh wait -- isn't that a common prerequisite for a Facebook account?)

I think the stats came from a CNN page, but I had trouble finding a news story hidden between all of the advertisements on the page. And the CNN page contains exactly ZERO source references for the stats. So who decided (and how) that 3/4 of Americans were on Facebook? Hopefully they first eliminated all of the non-Americans and business accounts first, then they need to eliminate all of the folks with multiple accounts (which should be easy, with Facebook's stance on [lack of] privacy). After all that, I find it difficult to believe the numbers.

But the obsession is quite real. More so than the Cult of Apple since it isn't limited to the rich. Oh wait, poor people with increidbly poor prioritization of life choices also belong to Apple's Cult, don't they?

But I obsess... um, I mean digress.

Bye

In Independence Day, my common sense is always calmed by assuming that the easiest way to crash a large, complex computer network is to attempt to connect Jeff Goldblum's Mac to it. Who needs a virus?

Color me stupid. Somehow I missed that this was a FACEBOOK security feature and though /. was going to start tying themselves to the evil facebook. Glad to know I'm completely wrong. Oops and sorry.

Does this mean that those of us who refuse to go anywhere near Facebook will no longer be allowed to post things? There ain't no way I'm ever going to have an account with something like that, I value my privacy (what little I have left) too much.

And anyway, I don't really *like* people and have no friends, so what would I be shown if I *did* have a Facebook account, but zero friends?

PS: apparently, one can no longer use the <i> tags to italicize words ("like" and "did" are wrapped in 'em above.) What else have we lost?

Agile programming works when performed by agile minds. Not all programmers are able to adapt to constantly changing requirements, but some are and they are the ones who succeed with agile programming.

3D perception is a artifact of the mind, not much related to our binocular vision (I have only one functional eye and my depth perception is very good -- except in a movie).

3D movies look great to minds not powerful and/or complex enough to detect the myriad flaws in the attempted 3D illusion.

How many great minds are there in Hollywood again? I think their affection for 3D and even more, their belief that it does (or even can) work is more proof that Hollywood is filled with exactly the kind of fools many of us have thought were gravitating there in the first place.