Category: Q & A

Because the writers and director of "A New Hope" wanted the ship to sound both futuristic (At the time of Star Wars' release in 1977, the new Millenium was almost 23 years away), as well as faaaaaast (The Falcon is a predatory bird, and its primary means to capturing small prey like other birds/mice/fish/Calista Flockhart(*)/etc is to locate and observe them stealthily while gliding at great height, then descend on them rapidly like a gravity-powered heat seeking missile).

Given the visual design of the ship, which as a necessary plot point looks both old/decrepit and sluggish, the juxtaposition with the name also serves as occasional comic relief throughout the course of the film franchise.

(* Now, doesn't that relationship make a lot more sense?)

Why is it called the Millennium Falcon?

Given Republican tendencies not to want to pay for the work they contract, I believe they would likely simply pass that invoice on to lower and middle class taxpayers.

How would Republicans react if Al-Qaeda assassinated Obama in retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden?

This is rare in the sense that it doesn't happen often unintentionally. If you're interested in greater control to extend or reduce erection persistence, read up on tantric techniques for men.

I believe this is also covered in "The Multiorgasmic Man", but it's been a while…

How rare is it for men to have an orgasm and remain erect until the following orgasm or two?

It's a clear sign of one of two factors:

• Age – Older outlets in California are two-prong, often ungrounded. They're still exceeding common, given the cost of electrical retrofits, and the secondary issues they may reveal during inspections (plumbing, seismic) that would also need fixing.
• Low-amp Circuits – Sometimes, people try to do really crazy things with standard apartment electrical outlets. To help prevent this, apartment management outfits most of the outlets (except the kitchen and bathroom) with two prong outlets, to make sure higher-amp electrical devices (grow-lights, hot plates, table saws) are not used within their apartments. Even if we're not talking about burning the place down accidentally, reduce the power output capacity, and you help reduce the potential noise factor for neighbors, which is less headaches for management. The basic idea is, if they give you higher amp protected circuits, you'd automatically abuse them. It's simply not worth the perceived risk for shorter term (sub 2-year) leases.

Depending on the nature of your apartment, it's much more likely to be the former – though some of the short term lease apartment complexes/chains do have a sprinkling of the latter as well.

Why are most of the outlets in apartments in Mountain View, CA two-prong?

Rather than a termination of interoperability, it's an extension thereof – whereas before, to chat with AIM contacts from Gchat, one needed to log into an AIM account – effectively making Gchat a "google-themed AIM client", at least while talking to AIM users.

Going forward, Gchat users will be able to see, chat, and possibly use other features (file transfer, video/audio, conferencing, chat rooms) with AIM users without needing a separate AIM account. That is, so long as you use Gmail or Google Apps, you'll be able to delete your AIM account from your Google Chat preferences(*), and still chat with AIM users.

Presumably, Google won't remove the existing functionality outright for a while, so this primarily affects Gmail/Gchat users who don't already have an AIM account, who also need to chat with someone on AIM. That sounds like a pretty small group of people to me…

Thinking it through a bit further, Gchat is (last I checked) based on XMPP protocols – and for this kind of AIM integration to work, it's possible that AOL has rolled out (at least in a limited fashion) an XMPP gateway for AIM, or even have transitioned to XMPP on their backend. If the latter is true, then this announcement is just the first of many, and ultimately will allow for many more uses for an AIM account – and perhaps, continued relevance for AOL, for another few years, at least.

(* As David Mickler points out in the comments, it is not possible to delete an AIM account/screen name, well, ever. Yikes!)

How did Gmail & AIM change the way their chat interacts in May of 2011?