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User: Hadlock

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Comments · 4,653

  1. Re:It doesn't take much on NASA Chief Tells the Critics of Exploration Plan: "Get Over It" · · Score: 1

    The commercial crew program does this in a realistic way. For about $2 billion we ended up with the Dragon, the Dream Chaser and whatever cargo lump that Orbital built, plus Orion. Three out of four are designed to be human rated.
     
    Blue Origin got some first and second round funding but they're way behind the curve compared to everyone else. Even Dream Chaser put down money for an Atlas V for a test launch already. Bigelow already has a "space station" in a near-polar orbit since 2006, but nobody's visited it yet.

  2. Re:Oh noes, I can't drive X miles on Will the Nissan Leaf Take On the Tesla Model S At Half the Price? · · Score: 1

    If it's your only car and you can't drive round trip to the largest near by city (Dallas-> Fort Worth and back ) on a single charge (can't always find a charging station in a strange town) it's not much good. Sure you can rent a gas car for long weekend trips, but that's really inconvenient for emergency trips or if you want to go see a concert, art festival, state fair etc one county over.
     
    Right now it's just a supplemental car. If I could get 200 miles out of it, I could drive to Austin on Friday after work.

  3. Re:volume on Why Tesla Really Needs a Gigafactory · · Score: 1

    If only there were another use for high quality, high capacity batteries, like laptops...

  4. Re:Not sure about the recovery test on SpaceX Launches Load to ISS, Successfully Tests Falcon 9 Over Water · · Score: 1

    The weight of the fuel decreases as you burn it out the back of the rocket, increasing efficiency For each second of the burn. Second, did you account for the rotation of the earth underneath the rocket? Zeroing out the forward momentum does eat up most of the fuel, but you don't need a whole lot of forward velocity to fall down a parabolic arc from that height to return home. Landing requires about 60m/s of delta v at it's new mass.

  5. Re:Not sure about the recovery test on SpaceX Launches Load to ISS, Successfully Tests Falcon 9 Over Water · · Score: 4, Informative

    The rocket (1st stage) when empty needs almost no fuel (about 4% of the total fuel at launch) to return to the launch site and land. The upgraded Falcon v1.1 has 10% more fuel at launch as well as increased cargo capacity (more efficient engines). Hitting a floating barge means you have to have good conditions at the launch site, as well as 400 miles out at sea as well. That dramatically limits your launch capability and exponentially increases your recovery costs.

  6. Re:Useful Idiot on Snowden Queries Putin On Live TV Regarding Russian Internet Surveillance · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's interesting what one will do when your political asylum is up for renewal.

  7. Re:Why spend another $700 for a car stereo on How Apple's CarPlay Could Shore Up the Car Stereo Industry · · Score: 1

    That's pretty much the exact opposite experience I've had. I've never had an issue with BT audio, even once. Range seems to top out at about 30 ft and for music listening, is perfect. I've run in to audio lag (20-40ms) issues when streaming audio to bottom tier $20 adapters but it's completely replaced physical audio cables in my house. The sounds system in the living room and bedroom both use it exclusively and I just stream to either/or from my phone as the "head unit" and use the speaker system as a dumb Amp.

  8. Re:The magical scenario is "gradual social decay." on Ask Slashdot: Are You Apocalypse-Useful? · · Score: 1

    You could rev up to about 1940's era technology pretty quickly. With the exception of flat screen TVs, the internet and integrated circuits that brings us pretty close to modern standards of living. After that you've exhausted all of the low hanging fruit like high tensile steel, most ceramics and crude plastics. Space age technologies (flexible products like modern rubber, silicone rubbers and other elastomers, hyper pure titanium, rare earth alloys, etc and of course Velcro) took about 4% of the national GDP to identify uses for, and then produce on an industrial scale over the period of a decade. This was on top of an incredibly prosperous era and winding down from the education boom of the 1940's that produced the scientists needed for the space race. Given any other outcome, we'd be lucky to have late 1980's technology today.

  9. Re:That's not the only thing that's gone... on The New 'One Microsoft' Is Finally Poised For the Future · · Score: 1

    The uptick of .net seems to have been that they unified their C/C++ computer scientists and C# business programming jockies, along with powershell scripting monkeys on top of the same framework. And fir the first two, share the same development environment.

  10. Re:trees have branches on How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion · · Score: 1

    There have been quite a few studies on how single-digit percent of Jews actively practice religion and/or marry a religious Jew; however those who observe at least some traditions from a cultural standpoint is well over 75%. We're all creatures of habit, but somewhere along the way we mixed religion and custom together.

  11. Re:XP users don't care on Slashdot Asks: Will You Need the Windows XP Black Market? · · Score: 1

    And when that hardware dies... will they buy an Android tablet for $179?

  12. Re:How much does it cost to upgrade? on Slashdot Asks: Will You Need the Windows XP Black Market? · · Score: 1

    People were still implementing new, paper-based workflows in 2000. By 2004-2005 that had mostly gone away, but jumping from NT4 to 2000 meant jumping 25-40% of the office to a new version, typically the smarter and higher earners who deal with change fairly well.
     
    By 2005-2006 you're looking at Vista era and half a decade of XP dominance, nowadays all employees not working in food service and/or retail are assigned a desktop. This resulted in a huge upswing of PC sales which has now leveled off. So now in addition to server class hardware and A-level users, you're also having to migrate your B, and in most cases C, D, and E-level users at the same time. Even the guy in the mail room needs a PC to check email from his boss and HR once a day. Our copy room has a desktop to open word files.

  13. Have you actually read an article about Google Chrome from start to finish? You clearly haven't ever used one, why did you even bother typing that post?

  14. Re:Dear UK gov, please move to Linux/FOSS on UK Government Pays Microsoft £5.5M For Extended Support of Windows XP · · Score: 1

    I'm sure for 5.5 million they could get the Mono project fully compliant. That's a team of 50 software engineers and 5 managers.

  15. Re:Gee, so only a year of screaming on Microsoft: Start Menu Returns, Windows Free For Small Device OEMs, Cortana Beta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's the WS2012 R2 kernel wrapped with desktop widgets. I'll let you google from there, but the improvements are vast. If you know what you're doing you can hack in WS2012 R2 functionality like file deduplication and NIC teaming in to your 8.1 desktop.

  16. Re:More mandated bugging devices on Department of Transportation Makes Rear View Cameras Mandatory · · Score: 1

    We ought to install shark sensors on surf boards, water and fork sensors on toasters. They cause more injuries per year than this will solve.

  17. Re:Wait a moment on Classified X-37B Space Plane Breaks Space Longevity Record · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see Voyager handle reentry through Earth's thick atmosphere and land gracefully on a runway. THAT would be a sight to see. Voyager 2 technically survived going through the rings of Saturn, but even that managed to take out several instruments (even though, to save someone's career that's not the official reason why they mysteriously failed immediately after)

  18. Re:sky should be the limit... on Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates · · Score: 1

    The undercarriage of an F1 car is protected by a plank of wood, unless they've changed that rule

  19. Re:Very amusing but... on Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates · · Score: 2

    My 1997 BMW 5 series (the Tesla competes with the 2014 7 Series) has a thick plastic underbody shield. It was designed in ~1992 and started production in Europe around 1994. So it's not a new concept. It also still gets 33mpg @ 70mph on the highway from Dallas to Houston and isn't a diesel.

  20. Re:"extrusion"? on Tesla Model S Gets Titanium Underbody Shield, Aluminum Deflector Plates · · Score: 1

    If you can get the price/durability/speed down by 95% it would be virtually indistinguishable from one of those star trek things that makes your food for you.

  21. Re:Errrrrr on Ask Slashdot: Preparing For Windows XP EOL? · · Score: 1

    Until you need to install some new package to your webserver which requires IIS 9 or .net 5.5 framework or whatever crazy new thing is coming down the pipeline.

  22. Re:Where are the online Computer Science degrees? on Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree? · · Score: 1

    MIT's entire CS program is available on youtube, go hawg wild. My roommate is a graduate of Youtube U and now is a Sysadmin for 2 seperate non-profits (plus side work) and owns a yacht out of Houston. He's also finishing up a degree out of WGU but that's just icing on the cake for him.

  23. Re:A printer and a template on Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree? · · Score: 1

    If you produce zero useful work, then yes that is fraud. If you go above and beyond their expectations A) will they seek to clarify your claimed records and B) are they getting less than the deal you both agreed to? If you're producing a level of work higher than the average college grad these days (not difficult to do) then there's no misdeed being done. And if they want to fire a high-performer for lying to get the job, that's the company's problem. I didn't have to lie to where I got, but I have a much nicer view than most of my better-qualified coworkers (whho have been there for 15+ years) after 2 years due to working my butt off and being valuable to the company. If you lie about your training and then sit on your ass all day then yes they will look for reasons to fire you. If you outperform your coworkers 2:1 then by all means, they should be looking for ways to keep you happy and keep you on.

  24. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? on Final Fantasy XIV Failed Due To Overly Detailed Flowerpots · · Score: 1

    As someone who still owns their childhood copy of FFIII (now known as FF6), I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one.

  25. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? on Final Fantasy XIV Failed Due To Overly Detailed Flowerpots · · Score: 1

    They're less strategy games and more interactive movies these days. History has taught us that people will go and watch a nearly unlimited number of sequels.