I remember seeing a discussion about a sci-fi show (Babylon 5, for anyone else who remembers the discussion) where someone said basically the same thing about a dead body sticking to the outside of a space station. If you do the math, though, you'll find that it doesn't take as much mass as you might think for an object to have enough gravity to pull in free-floating objects.

Wikipedia says Phobos' escape velocity is 11.39 m/s (41 km/h), which is enough to hold down a jumping human. So all the probe needs to do to reach an orbit around Phobos is slow down enough.

It wasn't.

That's easy, just post a comment on Slashdot.

Just to correct one part of this, Python's virtual environments are in no way a virtual machine - they just alter the environment variable PATH and the search paths used by the Python interpreter to find installed modules. There's no additional hardware virtualization.

Actually, containers are similar. Normally, they use the same kernel as the host operating system. There is no virtualization unless you specifically need to run a different kernel (such as running Linux containers on Windows). Running a Linux container on a Linux host is more like chroot than a virtual machine.

Sure, you could just change the time that school starts for the few months of winter. And the parents who need to get their kids ready for school and/or drop them off at school can change what time they show up for work. And since the workers are showing up at a different time, businesses can change what hours they're open. And since these changes all have to happen on the same day, you'll need someone to decide what days the time changes should happen.

Congratulations, you've just invented Daylight Saving Time, just with everyone needing to remember new start times instead of changing the clocks.

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted. Unfortunately bribery isn't quite as illegal as it should be.

Congratulations, here's your medal for pedantic dickweedery. The example of shouting "Fire!" in a theater has always had the implicit assumption that there isn't really a fire. Everyone (except you, apparently) knows that, which is why nobody bothers saying it every time they bring up the example.

You mean Communism?

Or, more to the point, bribery of public officials.

And that's cutting me own throat.

Automobile model years have started in the autumn for as long as I can remember. There's nothing illegal about it because "model year" doesn't tell you anything specific about the vehicle, so there's nothing that would be subject to false advertising laws.

Wait until you find out about corporate fiscal years.

If any of us were fun at parties, we wouldn't be on Slashdot.

To be fair, Babylon 5 did that once in a while too. JMS said that his job wasn't to answer questions, it was to start bar fights. Believers is the prime example, though it's probably one of the least liked episodes of the entire show.

You can. Go to Menu -> Feeds and you'll get only posts from friends, groups you're in, and people/pages you follow, sorted chronologically with the newest posts first.

If you own a car that's valued at $50,000 after the year you buy it, you can easily afford $500 in tax.