BB-8 (Baby-8) Star Wars. My wife is 8 months pregnant, so we had some fun with her costume this year. We bought a styrofoam ball to use for the head, the rest we made from stuff around the house.
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens hits movie screens this week with its intense plot, edge-of-your-seat action scenes and, of course, lots of lightsabers. But is it actually possible to create a real-life lightsaber or build a functioning Death Star laser? To answer these questions and more, Reactions explores the science behind the Star Wars franchise.
Han and Leia duke it out on the debut single for the galaxies #1 Geek n Roll band.
Roaming through the galaxy Imperial free.
Half-witted nerfherder stop looking at me.
Won’t you pretty princess take a ride on my ship.
You stuck up dirty scoundrel you can’t handle this.
The perfect gift for your 23rd century housewarming (shipwarming?) or wedding present: the Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Glassware Set. This set of 4 elegant, etched glasses can hold your Romulan Ale, Saurian Brandy, Scotch, or Altair Water (as well as your orange juice or milk). The question is: can you say the same?
Just a quick post to let you guys know about these free eBooks that we currently offer in partnership with tradepub. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, so be sure to check ’em all out!
The Federal Communications Commission is asking major broadband carriers to explain their policies on exempting some content from data caps. The commission is looking at the thorny issue of whether such policies violate net neutrality rules.
AT&T exempts content from companies who’ve paid to ‘sponsor’ their data, such as in delivering promotional trailers.
In each case, the FCC says it wants to check the policies don’t breach its Open Internet Rules. Those are the regulations — introduced after a lengthy political battle over the FCC’s rulemaking authority — which enforce the principle of net neutrality, namely to treat all legal traffic equally.
The problem is determining how strictly to enforce that principle. Many definitions suggest the concept simply means not blocking or deliberately slowing down traffic. A stricter definition might have it that exempting some content from data caps effectively makes non-exempted content more expensive to consume.
Which if any of the three companies are breaching the rules will depend on the interpretation. It’s hard to see how Comcast can be held at fault given its service doesn’t involve the customer’s main internet connection.
T-Mobile’s service also seems reasonable as it continues to allow all companies the opportunity to take part. Strictly speaking it’s favoring video content over non-video content, but that’s not really a practical issue given that video is the main content type for which data caps are a potential barrier to use.
AT&T’s service is the one that seems most open to question in terms of net neutrality. Whether or not you think what it’s doing is fair or reasonable, it does seem to be a case of a carrier treating traffic in a different way because the content provider is paying a fee. The question here is whether net neutrality applies only to technical measures (such as blocks or slowdowns) or if financial considerations come into play.
It should be noted at this stage that the FCC isn’t proposing a formal investigation or potential regulatory action. It says instead that it would like to meet the companies involved to discuss the issue by mid-January.
A fantastic and all too true comic by my pal Brin from Fowl Language. This is exactly what happened between my kids and I yesterday right before going to the Episode VII premiere.
Oh, and speaking of spoilers, John Kovalic of Dork Tower just published this informative graph about the acceptable time frame when someone can publicly talk about a movie without spoiling it.