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I managed to live a full and rich life without internet, cellphone or Starbucks. I think I could go back to that. Might take a while to get used to it, but I'd be fine. As for giving up a finger, try this one... 
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Not my middle finger!
#SupportHeForShe If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
Only 2 things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Solid-state drives outclass hard drives as a storage medium in almost every way: they’re faster, less fragile, and can store more data per square inch. But according to some experts, SSDs suck at long-term storage of information, thanks to one particular problem: temperature. So keep them in the fridge. (It also helps to keep the data fresh and crispy!)
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“There’s just a tremendously exciting prospect called solar sailing. [It] travels on the radiation and particles that come out of the sun, the wind from the sun. Because it has a constant acceleration, it can get you around the inner part of the solar system a lot faster...than the usual sorts of rocket propulsion.” "We climbed aboard their starship, we headed for the skies"
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Kent Sharkey wrote: it can get you around the inner part of the solar system a lot faster...than the usual sorts of rocket propulsion.”
Getting back might be interesting though. I'm not exactly sure it's possible to tack with solar wind -- the whole reason tacking is possible with terrestrial wind is because the sail acts like a wing, with a high pressure and low pressure surface. You don't exactly have that in the vacuum of space.
And, as I've just been educated[^] the real reason tacking works on the ocean is because of the force vector of the rudder and keel.
Hah, I learned something! So not to deflate the solar sail enthusiasts (and the media that is as dumb as their readership), solar sailing it's pretty much a one-way vacation.
Marc
Marc
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It looks like it is possible to tack[^] with a solar sail. Not exactly a high speed maneuver, from the looks of those diagrams.
There, now we've both been edjamacated 
TTFN - Kent
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So long as you don't leave the solar system and so long as you don't want to return fast (i.e. fine for machines, not for wetware) you just furl the sails and wait for gravity to bring you home(wards).
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: So long as you don't leave the solar system and so long as you don't want to return fast
that's true going out too.
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: you just furl the sails and wait for gravity to bring you home(wards).
nope. As shown in the second article Kent linked to you just angle them so that the force of light slows you down. The thing that you need to keep in mind to understand how it works is that a solar sail craft departs planetary orbit and is normally moving in/out in an elliptical orbit around the sun. As a result you can always enlarge/contract the orbit by angling your sail so that the suns light is pushing to speed up/slow down your velocity.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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I can't wait for the launch. I just hope it goes better than the last two missions I helped fund. The Planetary Society has been burned twice in a row by crappy Russian rockets (a prior solar sail attempt, and sending a sealed package of bio samples in/out on the Phobos return mission to test the impact of interplanetary radiation on viability); hopefully SpaceX has better luck.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Two researchers, Phillip Jovanovic of the University of Passau in Germany and Samuel Neves of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, published a paper exposing encryption weaknesses in the protocol. "Roll your own" not always a good idea
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Kent Sharkey wrote: "Roll your own" not always a good idea
Except for crypto I love rolling my own. Everything.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. - Oscar Wilde
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The annual Future of Open Source survey confirms what we all suspected: Open source has won. You know what this means don't you? THIS is the Year of Linux!
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...as if the Open Source world was only about Linux 
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Meet CHIP, a $9 single-board computer that is capable of running light Linux-based distros. "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" Oh wait, that's the other site
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If you can't concentrate at work and turn procrastination into an art form, it might not be all your fault. Complete and utter... hang on, I have to read something.
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Redmondologists decide patches will ship as soon as they're ready, a big change from the practice of the past 12 years. But it was always such a great excuse why you got nothing done on that day
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I'm not sure about that, but wasn't Patch Tuesday introduced to avoid the maintainance/deployment mess created by the idea to "ship patches as soon as they're ready"?
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Yup. "Those who do not learn from history..." etc. etc.
TTFN - Kent
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Yup; it'd need a restartless kernel to minimize the impact. And from what I've read about how Linux is implementing it (patching of running application stacks), it's not something that MS could get away with doing because when it inevitably blows up in the face of some clever sunshines of application developers MS will get 1000% of the blame.
I'm personally unconvinced that the article author is right. Every quote in it I saw could be applied to feature updates only.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Why the myth of the "10X" programmer is so destructive. "I'm just a regular Joe with a regular job"
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I've come to believe that most people, not just programmers, are just a bunch of bunglers, professionally speaking.
How many people are really interested in their work?
How many people strive to be the best at what they do?
Most people are much more interested in being with their families, going fishing, watching 'the game', doing whatever it is they like doing.
And rightly so I say, we are not defined by our jobs!
But then there are those few who either really love their job or are really smart.
They excel in what they do, be that programming, managing, building houses or cleaning desks.
Those people, in my opinion, are those 10x programmers (or whatever profession).
And recent study has shown they can be much more productive than that (a claim I can't back up as I can't find the article anymore...)!
In fact, having a good programmer, a good DBA, a good manager, a good what-have-you can save many, many hours of fixing bugs, performance problems, overtime... And time is money!
There is just no denying that some people are just a lot better at their jobs than others.
And if those people are not assholes about it they can save you a lot of time and money (if they are assholes they'll drag down the team and their supposed added productivity is negated completely).
It's not the 'myth' that's destructive.
It's the expectation that everyone should be that 'superstar'.
In fact, with good management, even the 'regular' people can shine like superstars!
Yes, let's call it the 'myth of bad management' (because most people are bunglers in that profession too  ).
If the notion of 'superstars' is destroying your company you've got a much bigger problem than superstars...
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There are people inside of Redmond currently working on a Windows cloud client, and when complete, the release will follow the Windows 10 free upgrade president. "If man is still alive, if woman can survive"
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Kareem Anderson wrote: the Windows 10 free upgrade president.
What about the vice-president? And prime minister? 
/ravi
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