Interesting. I wonder what Chef Brian has to say about it. Considering how much of a loose cannon he can be his reaction would probably be entertaining, if nothing else.

Try doing a ping on a satellite connection and watch the ping times going up and down because the data doesn't go up to orbit and back in a steady stream, but in bursts. And, for that matter, follow that up with a traceroute; you'll be surprised at how long that first hop takes.

Lickety split with 10 or 100mbit connections to run mozilla browser or thunderbird.

That was true back then. Alas, this is now and the definition of "likety split" has changed.

Indeed. And some of us do something to show that we actually care about our country and want to give something back in return for all that our country's done for us. In my case, I spent over 7 months in Tonkin Gulf, much of it on the Gun Line, back in '72.

Thank you for asking so politely. I respectfully decline to share why I have not (yet) become a citizen.

I have no reason other than curiosity to ask and certainly no reason to demand, or otherwise presume that your reasons are other than honorable.

And once you've lived here long enough are you planning to get naturalized and become a citizen? Not that I see anything wrong with you deciding to retain your citizenship in your native land, but I'm a tad curious.

This is why so many scientists write about the possibility of life as we know it on other planets orbiting other stars. Yes, we can imagine species that aren't based on carbon or can only live in a nebula feeding off of whatever molecules are available, but we currently have no evidence that they actually exist, or even could. Until we do, any discussions of life of that type can be only speculation or fantasy of a type that most scientists prefer to keep to themselves.

Whoosh! You might want to check just where Kembleford and Great Slaughter are to find out why I was asking about them. BTW, they're both in the Cotswolds.

Yeah; me too neither. When I was in sixth grade it was 1960 and we didn't have separate classes for different subjects. One teacher for everything until we reached junior high. And, calculators like that were at least ten years away.

Back in the '70s or '80s, Bob Ceserone at JPL wrote a paper about what stars Voyager 1 would pass near over the next million or two years. I'm sure that if you asked, JPL would be happy to send you a link to where you can download a copy. Or, if it's not online, send you a dead-tree copy.

We're going nowhere fast...

Oh, I don't know; the team out at JPL controlling Voyager 1 would probably beg to differ.

In case you still haven't noticed, you wrote about "prove reading" your posts. The correct word is "proofreading."

You think that's bad? I once saw a comment here where somebody had written that "...it's a doggy dog world." Right idea, expressed in the wrong words.

OK, but did they also win elections in Kembleford and Great Slaughter, both in the UK?

It's a good thing that Stevie never heard of Fizzbin, then, as he'd just keep changing the rules to whatever makes him win.