You guys know what?  I just realized that we don't have a nice online comic recommendation thread.  So!  In celebration of me getting Internet access back once again,I figured I oughta go ahead and kick one off! 
Grrl PowerYour basic superheroes comic... only with delightfully raunchy, nerdy, geeky, and outright cheeky humor.  Seriously, there were times I just could not stop laughing.  It stays pretty well in the PG-13 territory so it should be Safe For Work.  Updates weekly on Mondays.
Questionable ContentLike indie music, AIs, T&A, and sarcastic humor?  You'll love this.  NOTE: At times, most assuredly NOT SAFE FOR WORK.  It is exactly what it says on the tin.  Updates Mon-Fri.
DerelictI can't quite figure out what exactly has happened here.  Definitely post apocalyptic.  Sea life has somehow suddenly evolved and Humans aren't the only people on the planet anymore.  Of course, that's not to say they aren't making the best of it.  Careful of blood and gore, and I think one or two scenes of nudity.  Updates Mon, Wed, and Fri.
Kiwi BlitzSet in the future.  What happens when you give a hyper-active one-legged pink-haired German girl a Kiwi-mecha?  Why, she decides to fight crime for great justice!  Updates are irregular because the author/artist just started teaching English in Japan.

can i post here? yes? why can't i post in other people's fanfic -> new recs?
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Okay, folks, it's been more than a year since NCSoft killed COH, and it seems to me the effort to make this area a generic on-line gaming discussion zone has more or less petered out.  I'm seriously considering shuttering this board.  Yeah, I know, I've got boards in place here which haven't had any new posts since something like 2003.  But if we're going to have a generic gaming forum, I'm thinking we might as well start fresh.  Carry over those few threads here which still have some life, and say goodbye to the rest.
Thoughts, comments, objections?
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

1) I have seen a report that desktopnexus . com is hosting images made by people who are not the people who uploaded the images. I also understand that they claim copyright of images posted to their site. One might want to check that site to find out whether any of one's artwork has been posted there without permission, and go straight to the DMCA notices if it has.

2) Here's a useful site - you can provide an image or the URL of an image, and it'll go find other copies of the image on the web. Apparently, resizings and watermarkings don't fool this search engine. If you have an image and you want to know where it came from (or where it's been copied to), or who to pay for the rights to use it, this site will make the search easier.
http://www.tineye.com/
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

My search-fu is failing me - I know we discussed the "United Belt Alliance" here in the past, but I can't find any references to it now. Nor can I find any references to a "Belt Alliance". All the hits for "Alliance" on its own lead to the Warsies.

Judging from the FenWiki pages that link to this non-existent-on-the-wiki topic (125 Liberatrix, Knight Sabers, Greenwood Technical Institute, and For Tailed Ones), I'm guessing this might be something our mercs, furries, or both came up with.

Where should I be looking for "United Belt Alliance" data to put on the FenWiki?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014 ... elativity/]Two white dwarfs and superdense star. Yup, IDEAL for gravity lab in the sky - boffins

TL;DR: Observing this system won't reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, but it will let us know which theory needs revising.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Spotted in http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=18]this post on the SJ Games forums, as a comment on a discussion between two published Traveller writers:

Hans Rancke-Madsen Wrote:... I'm not a fanatic. A change that is a vast improvement can be justified. But a small improvement? No. Even though it belongs to a single person, the Traveller universe is a shared creation, and in a shared creation you shouldn't change things around just because you like your own version better. ...

I have a large cache of old files in the early Pagis XIF format. Unfortunately there isn't much that can view or do anything with these right now... there's a viewer that will only work up through WinXP, and the actual main software only works through Windows 2000 or so. If anyone has a copy of the Pagis software that they can provide me, or some other means of converting these into usable files that I can print without needing to load them one at a time in the viewer on a XP virtual machine... I'd appreciate it.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Sky and Telescope: "http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Sma ... 81431.html]Small Asteroid 2014 AA Hits Earth"

TL;DR: An asteroid discovered 01:16 UTC 1 January 2014 hit the Earth at ~02:30 UTC 2 January 2014. Luckily, it was smaller than the one over Chelyabinsk.

Of course, this won't increase funding for near-Earth asteroid detection. It didn't do any appreciable damage, after all...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Article here.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.