I second this.

I'm adequately supplied with political stories, you can get those anywhere. Stories that raise the indignation level are also common - "oh! how unjust that is!".

When you have stuff that nerds find interesting that you don't see everywhere else, nerds will come here to see it.

In order to test the OP's conjecture, you have to actually look for effects he is talking about. None of the big-iron systems have been looking for this effect.

Do you have a paper or citation link? I'd be very interested in any study that looked for effects due to the non-homogenoius distribution of dark matter.

I designed and coded the software for cabin pressurization systems used in commercial aircraft. BlueStrat is correct in all details, and if you know a little engineering you can easily convince yourself.

The cabin pressurization valve is an inflatable balloon (of sorts) sitting in an 8" diameter hole, and there are two of them. The system will easily compensate for even a large number of bullet holes in the body - 1" holes are much smaller than the area the valve system has to work with.

The pressure differential between the inside and outside can be at most 15 pounds per square inch(*). That means that a 1" hole would only present 15 lbs of force pressure on an object pressing against it, which can be easily overcome by a person. Bullet holes are much smaller than 1" diameter. Further away and the effect is negligible.

A window being shot out would not suck out a passenger. From experience, when an 8" diameter hole (the pressurization valve) is suddenly uncovered, it doesn't pull very hard on people standing near it and the pull ends almost instantly. Force isn't present for any length of time, and since F=M*A and V = A*T, you end up with very little velocity.

Sorry folks, Goldfinger doesn't get sucked across the cabin and forced through the blown-out window, and Pussy Galore doesn't have to pull the plane out of a tailspin.

(*) To reduce stress on the airframe, the cabin is depressurized as the aircraft reaches cruising altitude.This reduces the maximum differential by about 1/3.

You mean, like Slashdot?

Like, automatically refreshing every x minutes, jumping the page even while I'm in the middle of reading it?

Or refusing to let us link to a specific comment? (Pick any comment and try to come up with a link you can send to someone.)

Or like adding new styles and layouts that, at each iteration, reduce the information a visitor sees per page? (Reading Slashdot through an ever-dwindling portal - sort of like reading a newspaper through a straw.)

I'd mention "friends, foes, freaks, and journals, but there may be a compelling need to "unfriend" someone. I wonder how many millions of Skashdot accounts there are, and the number who actually write in their journals. You can't delete your account, because theres no need to (of course!).

Useability experts exist for a reason. Software experts don't seem to realize that other experts exist and that good systems have multiple facets of "good". Instead, it's "good software is all you need, and the more features the better."

(Tooltip: "Documentation is boring! I'll just pit up a wiki and let the users fill in pages for me.")

Jeff Hawkins pointed out that the game "twenty questions" is popular and significant. In twenty yes/no questions you can identify one million objects or concepts (2^20 = 1024*1024).

He conjectured that the reason the game isn't "twenty five questions" or any other number is that the data capacity of the human brain is about this much. By the anthropic principle, we use twenty questions because a game with any other number would be too easy or hard.

(Perhaps the game is interesting because our brains hold 2 million concepts, giving the game a 50% chance of success. While arguable, this is still predicts a range of "about a million" concepts for the fully loaded brain.)

This number (and the conjecture) has stuck with me. The idea that you can build a culturally literate mind - with the ability to understand a political speech, read a newspaper article, apply for a job - would take an understanding of only about a million concepts.

First of all, no one knows how neurons are linked together in the brain(*).

Second of all, as far as anyone can tell, the cerebral cortex is a repeated pattern of small structures ("Cortical Columns") which are, again - as far as anyone can tell, wired identically.

There's some variation: The afferent and efferent layers have thicker neuronal sections which correspond to "amplifiers" needed to send and receive signals to the rest of the body, the pre-frontal cortex is an endpoint layer, and there's lots of organelles with connections from place to place...

But so far as anyone can tell, the seat of intelligence (cerebral cortex) is just a repeating pattern of sub-processors, functioning in a way that we haven't been able to yet fully understand.

(*) To the level of detail needed to link simulated neurons together as a program.

I hope he wins. Having an independent source of income will remove a lot of stress from his life.

Prof. Farnsworth: "... that may well win me the Nobel Prize!"
Leela: "In what field?"
Prof. Farnsworth"I don't care! They all pay the same!"

"First secure an independent income, then practice virtue."

      -- Old Greek Proverb

Someone said "hey, what happens when I push this button"?