Silicon Asylum

And you always thought flying was the most safe form of travel.

"'The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340 ... notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane...'"

Space Debris Narrowly Misses Airliner

That's just messed up, I mean I knew that space junk posed a threat for our satellites, rockets, the shuttle, ISS, etc but having to worry about it entering the atmosphere just sucks. I mean yay one less thing for our extra-atmospheric endeavors to collide with but still messed up.

I wonder if my house insurance covers "impact from flaming space debris". I know I get most bizarre "act of god" type things but that's pushing it.

Ran across this the other day, a sadly true Microsoft'ism.

"Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276304

Also for those who haven't heard me talk about it yet, if your a programmer or any type of techie checkout The Daily WTF (recently renamed).

This is an oldy but a goody. It's a new version of the digital clock done in flash:

http://www.solvang-thomsen.dk/hand.swf

In follow-up to my earlier post When College isn't College.

I noticed on House the other night that Dr. Gregory House (the main character) made a comment about being the Dr. and making the diagnostic choices he was making because he "...went to college." WTF? In Canada all Dr. go to University for their degree.

Is "college" just the US'ism for Post Secondary Education in general?

"Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars" .... hmmmm sounds like scientists may have jumped the gun on the whole Global Warming thing. Warming occuring on Mars now has some thinking that the Sun is to blame.

Of course this won't be the final answer, science will have to flip-flop on the answer about another 1000 times over the next 100 years before we come to some kind of conclusion.

Next we'll find out cell phone use really is unhealthy ;)

Ok this has been driving me nutts lately. In Canada there is a pretty distinct line between College and University. BUT in the US everyone seems to refer to post-secondary education as College (whether it's actually College or University). Is there really no difference between a College Diploma and a University Degree in the US? Is one not hands on (college) and the other book (university) learning like it is in Canada?

(Yes that last line is over generalized but that's basically how it boils down.)