Slashdot Mirror


User: AikonMGB

AikonMGB's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
477
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 477

  1. Re:The right answer on Ask Slashdot: Where Do You Stand on Daylight Saving Time? · · Score: 1

    I know you are kidding, but I'll just add a couple points: 1) The Earth's orbit is quite stable; the seasons are caused by the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation is inclined its orbit normal. To make it an equinox year-round, fix that. 2) To slightly increase the period of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, we actually need to speed it up! Orbital mechanics are not always intuitive :)

  2. Re:Video rental on It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard · · Score: 2

    Let me fix that for you: why is movie rental supposed to work? Just because a business model made sense at one point for a particular medium does that mean that it will continue to do so moving forward, nor that artificial restrictions should be placed on innovation to force existing business models to soldier on.

  3. SMBC on The Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons Is Dead · · Score: 1

    I think Zach Weinersmith (http://www.smbc-comics.com/) would disagree :)

  4. Re:Quite accurately? on Universal Big Bang Lithium Deficit Confirmed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I believe they meant "precisely", not "accurately". Their theories make a prediction which has error bars on it; the measurements taken have error bars on them; the error bars do not overlap.

  5. Re:That's not how science works on Underground Experiment Confirms Fusion Powers the Sun · · Score: 1

    s/this type of neutrinos/this type of neutrino/

  6. That's not how science works on Underground Experiment Confirms Fusion Powers the Sun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nothing has been proven. Scientists have long had a theory about how the Sun powers itself. That theory can be used to make predictions, such as the type of neutrinos that we should expect to see emanating from the Sun. An experiment was devised to test such a prediction, the hypothesis being that this type of neutrinos is being produced and thus will be detected. Having performed the experiment, we see that the results match what we expected, validating the hypothesis. This is important and significant, and it provides further evidence suggesting the widely accepted theory is accurate, but it does not -- nor can it -- constitute a proof.

    The other interesting result would be if the expected neutrino type was not detected by this experiment, invalidating the hypothesis. This would raise further questions such as: is there some other mechanism powering the Sun? Is there something deficient in our understanding of neutrinos that prevented us from detecting them despite them being there? Was there an error in the test setup (i.e. is it repeatable by other parties)?

  7. Re:Exactly! on Anomaly Triggers Self-Destruct For SpaceX Falcon 9 Test Flight · · Score: 2

    Just pointing out that SpaceX's manned Dragon capsule won't have an escape tower; the launch escape system is a set of eight SuperDraco thrusters, which will also be used for soft ground landing after normal flights.

  8. Open FPGA? on Parallax Completes Open Hardware Vision With Open Source CPU · · Score: 1

    Is there an open-source FPGA design/implementation that you can run this on? Otherwise it's not really open-hardware all the way down, is it..

  9. Re:How much have they spent already? on Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 · · Score: 1

    You don't need a downed aircraft to do that kind of research though, you can just go out and look for something, maybe something that isn't even there.

  10. Re:Why the Australians? on Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 · · Score: 2

    Using your number of 0.001% probability of this crash being something technical, and my estimated value of MH370 of $2.6B, then $26,000. The 777 has a lot of flight hours; if there's a technical problem with it, its a corner-case quirk, not a fundamental design issue. Maybe it doesn't sit well with you, but it is not reasonable to expect 100% safety from any system -- it would be prohibitively expensive.

  11. Re:How much have they spent already? on Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 · · Score: 2

    You are of course correct for the initial search, but at some point you hit diminishing returns. Even if the failure were a technical one, the value of locating the wreck and determining the cause is likely of limited value. There are only so many systems that can fail, and we already do thorough failure modes analyses when designing aircraft. That's why flying is so safe these days.

    The 777 has a pretty good track record with 1,212 units built and five hull losses, only two of which were due to failure of flight systems. If the hull cost $261.5M and you estimate the value of a human life $10M, then the MH370 incident had a base cost of around $2.6B. If you only had one failure out of 1,212 hulls, that suggests you'd be willing to spend 0.08% or ~$2.1M to make sure it doesn't happen again.

    This is just one formulation of the cost/benefit and of course excludes some important factors like the public relations cost to MA and airlines in general, but hopefully it illustrates that there's a bound on how much we should reasonably be expected to invest in understanding the events of the incident, and that it is not an absurdly high value.

  12. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? on Tesla and Panasonic Have Reached an Agreement On the Gigafactory · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, a gibifactory would be ~1073.74 megafactories; you are mixing scales :) </pendantry>

  13. It's not a miracle on Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As Jim Lovell put it:

    From now on we'll live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle, we just decided to go.

    There seems to be this perception that space travel is this incredible thing. It is awesome for sure, but it is fully within our grasp to do with as we please. One of my favourite arguments against the conspiracy theorists goes: if NASA were willing to fake the Moon landing, they would have done something else by now.

    Let's reach for the stars again!

  14. Re:Great for India on India Launches Five Foreign Satellites · · Score: 1

    I would have modded you "+1 Insightful" instead of funny. As I mentioned above, this is a high-technology field that brings national prestige, fosters education, and can bring in foreign money. You are spot on.

  15. Re:Great for India on India Launches Five Foreign Satellites · · Score: 2

    Further, this is a high-technology field in which India can excel and become a prominent provider. This brings national prestige, foreign investment and support, provides (some) high-value jobs, and fosters better education. No, it's not going to solve India's problems over night, but it can help.

  16. Re:Makes a lot of sense on India Launches Five Foreign Satellites · · Score: 1

    It really depends what your target inclination is. In general for a non-polar orbit, you want a launch complex with a latitude close to that inclination to minimize plane changes. This is why the ISS is at 51.65 degrees, to make it "easily" accessible from Baikonur. So yes, Sriharikota's proximity to the equator will be beneficial for low-inclination (near-equatorial) launches.

    This particular launch, however, was to a sun-synchronous polar orbit. Your launch complex's latitude is much less important when launching to a polar orbit.

  17. Re:Bad move on Fusion Power By 2020? Researchers Say Yes and Turn To Crowdfunding. · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, since fusion would be an incredibly revolutionary technology, there is a tremendous amount of money to be gained by being "first to the post". Any investor with money already in one technology will push hard for only that technology to be funded, at the expense of all other lines of research. Fusion research is sadly driven by economic politics.

  18. Re:I have a really hard time caring... on Can Thunderbolt Survive USB SuperSpeed+? · · Score: 1

    Cables are also rated for maximum voltage, as it drives insulation thickness. This, combined with the current rating, is a maximum power rating. In the race for cheaper cables, don't be surprised if they are only just barely good enough for the existing specifications.

  19. Re:Why stop there? on Will Cameras Replace Sideview Mirrors On Cars In 2018? · · Score: 1

    As a bicyclist you (should) pay very close attention to what's going on in the right turn lane, are they slowing down? Have they seen me? *CAN* they see me? And trust me, I assume that all drivers are idiots playing on their phone will trying to eat a sandwich - having a indication that the driver turning right is absolutely blind and oblivious to my presence just means I can react a second earlier.

    Perfect! Since they are playing on their phone, even if their mirrors were intact, they would not be looking at them. Since your assumption of the driver's habits is the conservative one, it doesn't matter whether their mirror is a mirror, a camera, or a shattered piece of useless plastic.

  20. Re:Why stop there? on Will Cameras Replace Sideview Mirrors On Cars In 2018? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How can you spot cars that are long-overdue on having their brakes serviced so that you can be careful around them as well? This is a terrible reason for requiring mirrors on a car. As when driving a car, one riding a bike should always be careful and never rely on other drivers being 100% responsible, regardless of the condition of a vehicle.

  21. Re:Global warming.. on Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening On the Sun · · Score: 2, Funny

    When will people finally realize that anthropogenic solar cooling is a real issue that affects all of us?

  22. Re:Why not use it as a site to build the next one? on How Long Can the ISS Last? · · Score: 2

    The ISS's inclination is actually as high as it is to allow the Russian launch vehicles to be able to make the trip; the use of the STS merely capped how polar they could go.

  23. Re:DroidWall on Google Play Services Supplants Android As Google's "Platform" · · Score: 1

    You can turn on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth while in airplane mode if you so choose (possibly NFC as well, but I haven't tried).

  24. Arcuate Fasciculus on Dyslexia Seen In Brain Scans of Pre-School Children · · Score: 1

    There's a typo in the summary, the correct spelling is "Accurate Fasciculus".

  25. Re:No updates in 6 years? on FLAC Gets First Update In 6 Years · · Score: 4, Informative

    FLAC is asymmetric; lots of computrons to encode, but not very much to decode. I had an old iPod Video, and the battery lasted longer playing FLAC in Rockbox than it did playing MP3s in the native Apple software (or in Rockbox, for that matter). Despite being done in software, FLAC is just so stupidly easy to decode that it's nearly a moot point.