TAT-8 carried 280Mbit/s in the days when the equivalent number of telephone circuits was relevant. The Fastnet cable will deliver 320Tbit/s, so one million times more! I wonder how many newer cables cross TAT-8 and therefore lie on top of it? Dragging TAT-8 up from the sea floor sounds like it could cause some collateral damage. Perhaps they will leave some sections down there to avoid this.

Other links: Submarine cable repair animation, Informative article with annoying graphics

There's some prior art in buying land around new stations before building begins. "Metroland" is an area to the north west of London that was developed by the Metropolitan Railway on that basis. Build the stations, attract commuters, and make a profit from house sales and increased traffic. It would be interesting if the big gaps in CA high speed rail - San Jose to Central Valley, and Central Valley to LA, could be partly financed by commuter rail. People can commute a long way on high speed rail: look at Kent to London St Pancras on High Speed 1.

I think what they mean by "most flights from Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina to Portland, Maine, were canceled" is that airports north of Raleigh and south of Portland have canceled most of their flights. As RDU->PDM is operated by Breeze on Mondays and Fridays only, then taking it literally means a remarkably small percentage of US flights. Breeze have very nice A220s.

If we're using RFKjr as a comparison, then I haven't done lots of weird things.

Federated Union Of Bear Cub Carcass Dumpers Endorses RFK Jr.

When the three astronauts rip off their monitoring electrodes in Apollo 13, it's great to know that someone in the movie theater was saying "Won't somebody think of the taxpayers?"

The curly "d" with a cross appears to be a lower case Eth, which will be known to Slashdot's Icelandic, Middle English, and Old English readers. Just like smart quotes get turned into Angstrom symbols, Slashdot transforms the fancy "X" into something unexpected!

One eighth of the total address space (2000::/3) is allocated for use on the Internet. If the RIRs ever get anywhere near assigning all of this then the policy on the rest of the address space will need to be reassessed. That is not happening any time soon.

I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm not losing any sleep with almost 7/8 of the address space unallocated (minus about 2% for special addresses like fe80::/10).

There are others. but:

The decision has been left to the new administration after the previous plan was in danger of swallowing all the science budget - ref.

That sounds like a great question for a poll, if Slashdot still had them. I'm paying a subscription and would recommend it.

As far as I can tell you have posted 367 times in December, in which you typed 563 question marks. It's possible we're already getting enough.

Old person appears on screen
Idiot in the row behind: Is that Mozart?
Different old person appears on screen
Idiot in the row behind: Is that Mozart?
Third old person appears on screen
Idiot in the row behind: Is that Mozart?

Amadeus was released in 1984, so movie audiences have been inconsiderate and stupid for a long time.

Be very wary of any ALL CAPS enchanted rings.

If my memory is correct, I bought it after my first college interview, lost it on the way home and got it back through British Rail's lost property department. I also read it eagerly from cover to cover. Almost fifty years on I'm a little scared of re-reading it, but maybe I should.

I also remember being very inspired by Life Story on the BBC in 1987. I was superbly cast, with Jeff Goldblum as a manic Watson, Tim Pigott-Smith, Juliet Stevenson, and Alan Howard.

The discussion was about "geopolitical importance", so having a big population and a 20 trillion GDP might be better than being near the top of this list with Monaco, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Bermuda. If we've moved away from discussing "geopolitical importance" to "doing a great job enriching their citizens" then fine.

There's also the idea of rating on a more absolute scale. 50% of the times you are kicked in the nuts are above average, and 50% of blow jobs are below average. It's possible for almost all jobs to be objectively terrible, so if 40% can be described as "quality" then that's very good news, but obviously we should be striving to make it 100%. Even when every job is "quality" there will be better or worse ones:

Michael James: Did you find a job?
Victor Skakapopulis: Yeah, I got something at the striptease. I help the girls dress and undress.
Michael James: Nice job.
Victor Skakapopulis: Twenty francs a week.
Michael James: Not very much.
Victor Skakapopulis: It's all I can afford.