> I find it amazing and worrisome that an object that size can get so close to Earth and hit Jupiter without astronomers learning about it until after the fact.

Amazing... maybe. But I wouldn't waste too much energy worrying about such an event.

> To me, it is an indication that current near-earth object surveillance systems are not worth much.

Correct. The effort is at an infantile stage.

Even if we knew a year ahead of an asteroid that was on target for the Earth, there's nothing in our current technological capabilities that could be done to divert the event. Our nuclear missiles weren't designed to go beyond Earth's gravitational pull, so they wouldn't be useful. And we most likely won't have a years warning; it'd be more like weeks if even that.

Some rough estimates put the number of asteroids in our own solar system to be about a billion. We're currently tracking an extremely small percentage of them; and that task is difficult enough as the asteroids make such infrequent appearances, and they're "small". But if even a small asteroid a few miles across in size traveling 60,000 miles/hr were to strike the Earth, it would drastically overshadow your bad hair day.

SD

Reference.
Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything.

> 13' RGB monitor

Oof... they sure made monitors big back then.

> He became the first star to be "launched" by a successful music video

Er... what? He "launched" several years before MTV came along.

sd

At work we're currently in a heated debated whether we should adopt peer code reviews (what the boss wants) or paired programming (what us devs want).

We feel that paired programming provides all the benefits (and them some) of peer code reviews but doesn't have all the cons of peer reviews. Here's a quick run down of what we came up with.

Pros for paired programming:

        * A natural knowledge backup is created (2 devs know how the new code/design works)
        * More sound design decisions can be made during design/development stages (two heads are better than one).
        * Complex problem solving.
        * Fewer bugs. Better quality product.
        * Less total overall time spent coding/maintaining.
        * No new software to purchase/install/learn (I.e., peer code review software - Review Board, Crucible, etc.).

Cons for code review:

        * If the design decisions are poor and need to be reworked, we don't find out till the code review.
        * Code review step likely to get skipped with tight deadlines.
        * Chance for egos to get bruised.

I'd appreciate anyone else's comments on this comparison.

Thanks!
SD

> Now if John Lasseter leaves, then we might be able to talk about Pixar going downhill.

You spelled Brad Bird wrong.

"The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its products is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

Hey, how about a full refund of the purchase price?

sd

> Why can't they change the cover, change the image on that page, and MOVE ON!

Actually, just the moving on bit would be sufficient.

sd

I've used dvdbackup for a few years to make 1:1 copies of my DVDs (menus and all).

Something like this works (adjust the '-i/dev/scd1' part point to your DVD)
dvdbackup -v -M -i/dev/scd1 -o/"`pwd`"

> 1. Learn how to say "I'm not sure"
> 2. Learn how to ask somebody for help.
> 3. Learn how to ask "do you have anything I can help with".

Isn't the order more like 3-1-2 for a college graduate? ;)

My sentiments exactly.

I seriously don't understand the Apple fanboyism on this one (or 90% of the time in general).

I picked up a Sansa c250 for $25 last year and added a memory card $15 for a total of 6 GB. $40 total.

I put Rockbox on it (which if freaking awesome!) and the current iPod shuffle would be a seriously huge downgrade for twice the price.

Vote w/your pocketbook. Oh, and apparently Sansa actually has given their devices to the Rockbox devs in the past specifically so the Rockbox team can get Rockbox working on the Sansa devices.

SD

> > I checked the top 10 (you can check the rest), and they *ALL* have JavaScript.

> Not when I visit them with firefox, they don't.

> I have NoScript installed. So those sites load really fast in firefox.

They still have JavaScript whether you choose to render it or not. I think you missed the point of the parent.

SD

> Not on the desktop, but there are large number of computer users who work on headless computers, and frankly don't want anything more than a console open with ssh.

I run X and still prefer MC; I have for years.

I've tried switching to Konqueror/Krusader/Thunar/etc., but I always go back to MC.

With MC's app bindings, there's really nothing you can't do w/it. And it's just so much faster to navigate around and get shit done.

Good luck MC devs!