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User: amh131

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Comments · 33

  1. Re:So on Looking To Better Engines Instead of Electric Vehicles · · Score: 1

    Tell me more about the great Vegetable Bubble ...

  2. Re:Let's hope NASA is better at math than TFA on NASA Looks At Railgun-Like Rocket Launcher · · Score: 2, Informative

    Back of the envelope for 6000 mi/hr (100 x 60 mph rollercoaster) in 2 miles gives something on the order of 114 G.

  3. Re:This is good. on The Rise of Small Nuclear Plants · · Score: 1

    Oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. 2:1 or even less I think. I once saw a polar bear rocking one of those rollagon bus things they use for bear watching expeditions in Churchill, Manitoba, trying to get at the morsels inside. If the treehugger could get the SUV stopped (maybe he could jam his head into the wheels?) I think the bear would have an excellent chance!

  4. Re:Apple's current product line on Updated Mac Mini Aims For the Living Room · · Score: 1

    I believe that they *do* come with a Kensington slot. Or, at least the one setting next to me does (2009 Mini Server). It's the vertical slot above the USB ports, between the fan vent and the 1/8" microphone jack.

  5. Re:It was too easy on NASA Ends Plan To Put Man Back On Moon · · Score: 1

    The escape velocity of the moon is about 2.38 km/s. I suspect that escape velocity is the important measure of an airless body rather than then absolute gravitation.

  6. Re:If only... on Space Shuttle Spy Gets 15 Years · · Score: 1

    From that perspective I also orbit whenever I jump off the ground ... which is technically true I suppose.

  7. Re:Sigh on Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target · · Score: 1

    You can't have the huge wars (WWI/WWII) of the 20th century without an industrial complex to produce the materiel required/consumed by the war. That's also why civilians (or the workers in the industrial plants if you prefer) are targets in such a war. The same applied to farmers/peasants in an earlier age when food was the primary consumable for armies.

  8. Re:Sigh on Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target · · Score: 1

    because the large industrial nations that can economically support large dreadful wars also have nuclear weapons.

  9. Re:Anonymous Coward on Supreme Court Review of Bilski Heats Up · · Score: 1

    I'm not going to argue about the software patents being applied -- I agree, they certainly are! But I will take exception to the notion that my brain isn't a computing device and even if it isn't, then the pencil and paper I'm using *definitely* is. This is the fundamental problem that I have with software patents; there are many, many different ways to create a computing device and it seems like a software patent applies to all of them, including the pencil and paper. Otherwise, avoiding the software patent would be trivial since it would have to enumerate all the exact computing devices to which it applies. There are *many*, *many* different computing devices -- pencil & paper, mechanical, optical, electrical, chemical maybe quantum etc. And those are very, very broad strokes! Is a stack architecture different than a register-to-register? What about MIPs vs Alpha (RIP)? Where do you draw the line?

  10. Re:Our tax dollars at work. on When Your Backhoe Cuts "Black" Fiber · · Score: 1

    A usually reliable source informs me that Tarkin was holding Vaders leash -- it's not really surprising that he wouldn't object. A sharp yank on the leash always gets *my* attention. There was no mention of leash length, however.

  11. Re:Neat technology on Fusion-Fission System Burns Hot Radioactive Waste · · Score: 1

    But wait! That spinning flywheel is a potentially deadly concentration of energy. If the bearings fail then the flywheel could run riot, crushing and destroying everything in it's path. Or, more likely, it would just explode. The only way to be safe would be to build a large, extremely strong, prestressed concrete containment facility. Maybe it would be shaped like a big dome.

    All joking aside, the problem with any energy containment system is that to be effective & economic they have to have a high density. That makes them hazardous.

  12. Re:At least getting rid of the waste won't be hard on NASA Developing Small Nuclear Reactor For the Moon · · Score: 1

    The "dark" side of the moon is illuminated 14 days out of 28, so not really all that dark. Cue the Pink Floyd fans to enter the thread now.

  13. Re:Having worked in manufacturing... on Melting Microchip Defects May Extend Moore's Law · · Score: 1

    I think the idea here would be to make this a standard part of the manufacturing process -- don't attempt to detect which fab steps have defects, just zap them all with a short pulse in an attempt to regularize the current patterning. Heck, maybe you'd even leave the mask in place! Or, more likely, make up a new mask so you only remelt regions that can benefit. That would certainly add to manufacturing cost (masks are expensive) but probably not even to the degree that planarization did.

  14. Re:Anti-personnel weapon on How The Latest in High Tech Works · · Score: 1

    Just a guess, but probably pretty close to 100 C. Maybe a bit more what with all the salts and stuff in solution. 100 is a good ballpark though.

  15. Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes on The Copyright Crusade a Lost Cause? · · Score: 1

    The only trait I can think of is government enforced exclusive use. I think that might be true of personal property too though, or at least I get a trifle ticked if somebody comes and uses the pens on my desk. Especially if they use them up. Of course, if they use them and don't alter them in any way whatsoever and I don't want to use them at that specific time then I'm not sure what sort of legal claim there might be. Still, it seems wrong.

  16. Re:Guarding the guard on 2008 Turing Award Winners Announced · · Score: 1

    I gotta say that in my fairly modest experience I never noticed a lack of "abnormal" personalities in any psychology class. Made me wonder about the value of all those tests that the grad students made the undergrads take given that everything seemed so darn far away from the median ...

  17. Re:star trek as a guide? on The Future of Google Search and Natural Language Queries · · Score: 1

    It seems rather more likely that you would get something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

  18. Re:So? on RCMP Won't Go After Personal Filesharers · · Score: 1

    It seems extremely unlikely to me that people would secretly grow large amounts of pot in their houses if it wasn't illegal. So, yes, the items pointed out would not occur if it wasn't illegal.

  19. Re:US ability to jam .... on US GPS, EU Galileo to Work Together · · Score: 1

    I don't know for sure either, but it seems very unlikely to me that an existing GPS satellite would have anything like enough power to try and jam another satellite. Orbit is huge! And if there is some sort of signal authentication then you'd just not use the scrambled signals. I suppose it's possible for an existing satellite to try and spoof another one .. don't know too much about this sort of thing.

  20. Re:It's not the plane that matters so much. on Flying the Airbus A380 · · Score: 1

    That might have something to do with the major cities in Canada being distributed in a narrow sausage along the 49th parallel while the US has a much more mesh network. I don't *know* that this is the case, but my flights in Canada have always been of the stop-and-go variety where we touch down to pickup/drop-off people.

  21. Re:Those "nights"? on NASA's Future Inflatable Lunar Base · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a matter of fact, it's all dark.

  22. Re:other examples of history repeating itself on The RIAA and French Button-Makers · · Score: 1

    Errr. So, the work is done in China and the product of that work is cheaply available in China. I'm not completely certain I don't see this as a domestic product.

  23. Re:What's stopping you? on How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? · · Score: 1

    It's not precisely an accident that there's 180 deg between boiling and freezing in Farenheit either. Dunno where the 32 deg offset comes from though -- and I'm not *so* curious that I'm going to go looking for it either.

  24. Re:Why not rush it? on Green Light For ITER Fusion Project · · Score: 1

    If the energy was cheap enough we could *make* the oil out of basically any old carbon source (+H2O) that we happened to have lying around. Maybe sewage! Or landfill crap. Or some crazy scheme that inhales C02 from the atmosphere. It's really just an energy density/delivery mechanism. Notice that the energy might need to be *very* cheap ...

  25. Re:True of false? on When Stallman is Attacked · · Score: 1

    But you can! It might just be that nobody listens. Feel free to add code and recompile (or not ...) as much as you like. You can even redistribute it. What you can't do is make people use it.