Yep.

Scanning down the comments -

Nope. They missed it.

Seems to me I read about this in Atlas Shrugged.

Can it take out a building yet?
What kind of input device does it use (Keyboard, xylophone) ?
Man portable?/Vehicle mount?

So many unanswered questions ...

Wow.

20 fucking hours and only two (three now) comments on a straight science article, but political bullshit has you fucking 'nerds' lining up.

Where are the people who could hve recited all 274 objects? Where are the people who can tell me everything I could possibly want to know about Saturn, had hands on experience with the observational and telemetry hardware, worked with the information gathering systems.

Have you all died, or just went away. Seriously, I would like to know. There has to be at least one of you around here still....

Right?

I once knew a guy who had pi memorized to 500 places. Honestly, thinking about it, I'm no longer sure if he had any other useful talent.

And it was useful. He could pick any spot in the series, run it front to back, back to front, every other number, whatever he wanted, and with math you can do in you head or with a pencil and paper, make something cryptography secure, or at least very inconvenient to solve without using the rubber hose method, and we even solved that more than 30 years ago.

I hope you all come back some day. I miss you.

(Posted as someone who forgot his first two slash logins, used to have sacmog, and then one other I forgot in a ... 151 soaked evening... before this, and still have kronickoff so I can bitch if they manage to kill this account.)

But in all seriousness, is this just another symptom of my git off my lawn syndrome, got to grow the beard to show I'm here or what?

Or are memories all I'll ever have?

Pardon me.

Murder for financial gain.

I'm pretty sure murder for hire should be close to the top.

Oh yeah. These were just communication satellites. Easily measured wattage.

This guy wants to fuck with sunlight.

I always love read about people who have a new way to control the sun.

They're a firmly documented and shining part of history. Every single one of their success just shine out.

DAMN.

Thank you.

That was the trigger I needed. Been trying to remember for a year or more.

The Complete Venus Equilateral.

Gotta go get it now, but it seems to be more relevant on many levels .....

Let us see, from memory:

Destruction if the beam to Earth wanders even a fraction off target ... Check.

Inter[solar,planetary,..cene] competition and screwing the consumers for every penny...Check.

Multiple litigious attacks by the bad guy...Check.

Basic replication and transporter technology (via Star Trek definitions)...Check.

Attempt to legally block above technology for monetary gain....Check.

Oh yeah, bad guy dies riding the legal award to the death, with no accomplishment. But he can't give it up. Legally...Check.

And if I haven't pissed off enough people by now, I'm going to hunt down one of these AI gurus and ask them to correlate Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged with current politics.

In my opinion, the first prompt would be something like:
How many government officials, from local to national, in the last 10 years have used the:

"I didn't know. I quit. You can't blame me." [Fucking retards.]

Now I'm going to have another shot of [tequila, rum gives me gas from the sugar] and go sail the seas.

Argargarg.

Wow.

From my ancient 64 years old what I see, and why I quit watching, are all the 'new' writers are constantly redoing all the 'old' writers stuff because no one I know likes their new shit.

And they horribly mangle the old stuff to fit their more -something- view they are entitled to through creative license.

What they started with was considered classic in many cases, what they delivered was shit.

Hint: It's not the old writing that's the problem.

How dare you leave Idaho off that list.

WE ARE EVERYTHING SPUD!

Grandma farts in your general direction.

Having read all comments at this point, and finding no mention of one point I think might be important; then reading TFA, and there is still no mention: Who is launching all these satellites?

Because maybe, uhmmm - I don't know, ummm, oh yeah.

They don't make as much money as he does.

Hobbies are fine, but they seldomly pay the bills as well as one would like.

Kill him dead
Smash his head
Stomp him till
He turns bright red

With a snap
And a crunch
And a solid meaty thud
Let's see some purple dino blood!

Apologies to the owner. Not myself.

I can only speak from my viewpoint in Eugene, Oregon area, but two of the three you name are each the third most expensive in their respective areas.

Half the stores in the area were closed in the Kroger/Albersons/Safeway merger. There is now no competition between them in any neighborhood. You get one or the other.

ATT owns all communication infrastructure in Oregon (going back to the Ma Bell break-up and the acquisition of some Internet backbone), they license to Verizon, who sell licenses to anyone else. T-Mobile has a nice pre-pay plan, but their regular service wasn't cheaper, you just got a better free phone.

There is one tower where I live, it belongs to Verizon. There is one cable company (under many names, but all are equal to Comcast, who leases hanging wire space from ATT, or WiFi/Satellite from Verizon) and it's not cheap.

And before someone tries to blame the big corps here, Oregon as a State issues all these exclusive licenses, and is 95 percent Democrat and has been since 1982.

Mergers are never for the consumer.

Unless they own stock.

Are you pregnant?

Just asking.

Played that at a friend's house day before yesterday.

I forgot how stupid it was.

She liked it.