from the cum-grano-salis dept.
Rockets.

Mount rockets at selected points on the earth's crust, and use them to move it all around so that pesky hot spot is under a region too thick for the molten rock to penetrate. It's projected to move under such a spot in a few million years or so anyway; why not accelerate the process?

Possible caveats:

• This may relocate other hot spots to more dangerous locations.
• The massive acceleration may enlarge minor or hitherto unknown faults in the earth's crust.
• Failure to produce uniform acceleration worldwide may cause tectonic plates to slam into each other and bounce around like bumper cars, triggering major earthquakes around the globe.
• It may be difficult to procure the necessary size and quantity of rockets, or to securely attach them to the crust at the appointed locations, and the huge amounts of exhaust generated may cause additional problems.
• I may not, in fact, have any idea what I'm talking about.

Discuss.

from the I-will-never-understand-this-'decimal'-nonsense- if-I-live-to-be-C! dept.
I turn 21 today (hint, hint). This whole aging thing is already getting on my nerves.

from the and-change-the-combination-on-my-luggage dept.
Why the hell doesn't anybody issue randomly-generated passwords with new accounts anymore?

And don't even get me started on those asshats who make you pick a "security question" from a stupid little drop-down list.

from the boreholio dept.
Dumping this here just for the hell of it. Would be more readable if I didn't have to work around the stupid filter.

Overall Structure
-----------------
Bytes 0001 - 0010 : ASCIIZ : "TERRANMAP"
Bytes 0011 - 0015 : -????- : 1A 05 00 00 00
Bytes 0016 - 0019 : INT-32 : Width
Bytes 0020 - 0023 : INT-32 : Height
Bytes 0024 - 0043 : -????- : ???
Byte: 0044 - ---- : -????- : 01 = flat map
Bytes 0045 - 0047 : -????- : ???
Bytes 0048 - 0051 : INT-32 : LabelCount
Bytes 0052 - 2611 : STRUCT : array(1..64) of Label
Bytes 2612 - 2651 : -????- : ???
Bytes 2652 - 2731 : ASCIIZ : Filename
Bytes 2732 - 2739 : -????- : ???
Bytes 2740 - ???? : STRUCT : array(1..(Height), 1..(Width / 2)) of MapData
Bytes ???? - EOF. : -????- : Landmass ID map?


Label Struct
------------
Bytes 01 - 04 : INT-32 : X
Bytes 05 - 08 : INT-32 : Y
Bytes 09 - 40 : ASCIIZ : Label text


MapData Struct
--------------
Byte: 01 : BITS : Flags:

• 00001000 = Moist
• 00010000 = Rainy
• 00100000 = Ocean
• 01000000 = Ocean Shelf
• 01100000 = Just above sea level
• 10000000 = One level above sea level
• 10100000 = Two levels above sea level
• 11000000 = Three levels above sea level
• 11100000 = Four levels above sea level

Byte: 02 - -- : BYTE : Altitude (0x3C = 10m; lower values are depth)
Bytes 03 - 04 : ???? : ???
Byte: 05 - -- : BYTE : 0x00
Byte: 06 - -- : BITS : Flags:

• 01000000 = Rolling
• 10000000 = Rocky

Byte: 07 - -- : ???? : ???
Byte: 08 - -- : BYTE : Tile owner (should be 0xFF)
Bytes 09 - 12 : BITS : Flags:

• 00 00 00 01 = Borehole
• 00 00 00 10 = Pod?
• 00 00 00 80 = Sensor
• 00 00 04 00 = Airbase
• 00 00 10 00 = Landmark?
• 00 00 20 00 = Forest
• 00 00 40 00 = Condenser
• 00 00 80 00 = Mirror
• 00 01 00 00 = River source/Aquifer
• 00 04 00 20 = Nutrients
• 00 04 01 20 = Energy
• 00 04 02 20 = Minerals
• 00 08 00 00 = Bunker
• 00 20 00 00 = Monolith
• 00 80 00 00 = Farm/Kelp
• 00 80 08 00 = Farm, Enricher
• 04 00 00 00 = Road
• 0C 00 00 00 = Tube
• 10 00 00 00 = Mine
• 20 00 00 00 = Fungus
• 40 00 00 00 = Solar/Tidal
• 80 00 00 00 = River?

Bytes 13 - 14 : BITS : Flags:

• 00 01 = Mesa
• 00 04 = Geothermal Shallows
• 00 10 = Cluster Borehole
• 00 20 = Nexus
• 01 00 = Crater
• 04 00 = Jungle
• 08 00 = Uranium
• 40 00 = Desert
• 80 00 = Fresh water (sea); ??? (land)

Byte: 15 . -- : BYTE : 0x40
Byte: 16 . -- : BYTE : Art ref?
Bytes 17 - 44 : BITS : array(1..7) of INT32 = (Flags2 AND 7F FF FF FF)

from the smart(m)asses dept.
That ThinkGeek banner made me laugh, but I still like this version better. To be anal, though, violets are more like #8000FF; that sort of electric purply-indigo color halfway between blue and magenta that almost hurts your eyes.

"If you see it, you should want to lick it."

from the whatever-it-is-that-they-write-it-on-up-there dept.
Dear Canada,

Owing to recent increases in heating costs, we must ask that you suspend all shipments of cold air for the next several months.

Respectfully Yours,
The United States of America

P.S. Our words are backed by nuclear weapons.

from the push-the-button-frank dept.
There has got to be a better way to arrange Slashboxes than moving one single box up or down one space at a time using those dinky little arrows.

from the food-for-thought dept.
Why are (brand-name) Frosted Mini-Wheats bigger than (generic, non-mini-) Frosted Shredded Wheats?

Was there a memo about this that I missed?

from the ian,-this-is-unacceptable dept.
I just tried the new Freenet with "next generation routing," and thus far have seen little or no improvement over the situation described in my last entry. While it seems to pay more attention to connection limits this time, it still causes the same weird behavior in internet apps, and thus cannot be run in the background without driving me batshit insane. I'll wait for the next version; thanks anyway.

from the the-price-of-freedom-is-eternal-torment dept.
C:\WINDOWS>netstat -n | wc -l
40

C:\WINDOWS>GOOD HELL!
Bad command or file name

This is after limiting Freenet to 20 connections due to the ongoing Winsock-monopolizing spree it's been on since the previously-journalled Slashdotting.

Note that although the number above is inflated by 3 lines of headers, 2 fproxy connections, and a partridge in a pear tree, that still leaves over 30 connections.

from the you-bastards dept.
I think this article is going to do wonders for the Freenet userbase. Why do I say that, you ask? Because I had 38 fricking connections to my node after it was posted, and no remaining bandwidth whatsoever! Unfortunately, I only thought to get a screenshot (I will be very surprised if that link works at all for the next 24 hours.) later, after it had gone down to 33.

Of course, my ISP cut me off a few minutes later, but I've begun accumulating connections again; 16 at last count. Update: Connections seem to be going back to normal now. I saw it get up to ~25 this time, but a few minutes later things got so bad that the Open Connections page wouldn't even reload, so I don't know what the real peak was. At least the screenshot will load in a reasonable time now.

from the i-feel-pretty dept.
Anybody else notice that the games, Apple, YRO, etc. themes get applied to your config page, journal, etc. if you go there from those subdomains? Screwy, innit?

from the tête-du-merde dept.
Am I the only one who really wants to punch all the trendy French-hating fuckwits who have suddenly oozed out of the woodwork? Now, I enjoy a good "France surrenders" joke as much as the next guy, but the kind of people who are willing to shoot up a French-owned business just because they don't like the French government's stance on Iraq really disgust me.

Speaking of shooting at the French, does anybody else think the invasion of Iraq bears a striking resemblance to the German blitzkrieg tactics? I mean, we've got:

• Air support paving the way for ground forces.
• Authoritarian leadership on both sides of the war.
• Overextended supply lines.
• Shitty weather.

Damn near identical, innit?

from the use-LAME-you-hippies dept.
These are just a few of the many things that really piss me off:

• Really long file names (already bitched about this).
• Duplicate ID3 tags. If you're not going to add anything that requires an ID3v2, but insist on having one anyway, you're a lame fuckwit who should be shot for wasting valuable bandwidth.
• Stuff with a higher [[bit/sample]rate/number of channels] than needed. Speeches by Dubya do not need to be encoded at 128Kbps 44.1KHz stereo. Take it down to 32Kbps 11025Hz mono or you're still a lame fuckwit who should be shot for wasting valuable bandwidth.*
• Stuff with a lower (bit/sample)rate than needed. I can understand this if you're using a hardware player, but when I can't find a single copy of a song that's above 128Kbps, I start to get pissed off.**
• Not really an MP3 gripe, but would somebody please hit the idiots offering "DVD rips" of [insert the name of any movie that George Lucas is refusing to release to DVD here] with a clue-by-four? While you're up, please hit Michael Eisner, Jack Valenti, and Hillary Rosen too.
• Sound effects in MP3 format. If it's less than, say, 4MB to begin with, I don't think the size-quality tradeoff of MP3 is worth it. Use FLAC instead.

*While you could argue that distributing Dubya speeches in the first place is a waste of bandwidth, they do have some value when placed in the hands of parodists, musicians, etc.
**You may think this makes me a lame fuckwit who should be shot for valuable bandwidth. Tough.

from the sport-utility-filename dept.
Why the hell do so many people think it's necessary to have filenames like John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra -- Star Wars - Episode VI - Return of the Jedi - Special Edition Soundtrack -- Disc 1 - Track 02 -- Main Title - Approaching The Death Star and Tatooine Rendezvous.mp3? They're called subdirectories, mmmkay?

And yes, I would like some cheese with that whine.