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User: robot256

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  1. Re:This is just a stunt on U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars' · · Score: 1

    The only political goal NASA ever achieved was the Apollo project. Every other piece of political grandstanding is just noise in the background to the scientists and engineers on the ground who are trying to advance the state of the art. The only projects that NASA ever finishes these days are either small enough to fly under the radar (pun intended) or involve international agreements which if we break them would make us look bad to our allies. The unmanned Mars program and many climatological satellites are examples of the first, and the International Space Station and James Webb Space Telescope are prime examples of the second. But arms trafficking regulations and "national pride" prevent us from collaborating internationally on any new manned launch vehicles or habitats, so those projects inevitably get cancelled when every new batch of congresscritters try to put their names on something.

    The only way for NASA to finish a big manned project is to contract it out to companies with capital to keep development going between political catfights, or somehow block the legislature from changing its priorities or funding levels more frequently than every 5 or 10 years. Or cut the politically-motivated crap entirely and just give more money to research and development projects so that maybe by the time humanity comes up with some real priorities, we'll know how to build a friggin' warp drive.

  2. Re:Rant against the cloud on youtube? on Woz Compares the Cloud and PRISM To Communist Russia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It would have been more of a mistake if there was any hope his opponent would have been better on these issues. Frankly, the only reason any Republicans are speaking out against the NSA is because it's Obama's NSA. They were just as complicit as the rest of us when they rammed the Patriot Act through.

  3. Friends on Ask Slashdot: How To Bypass Gov't Spying On Cellphones? · · Score: 1

    staying away from certain places; like Google Plus, Facebook, and friends

    Summary is correct. The only way to stay off of Facebook is to not have any friends.

  4. Re:Vasectomies aren't reversible? on Reversible Male Contraception With Gold Nanorods · · Score: 1, Funny

    You're absolutely right! Sex education has been virtually outlawed in the USA by the religious right, witness the result.

  5. Re:Meanwhile on 10GbE: What the Heck Took So Long? · · Score: 1

    I saturate my gigabit link all the time transferring videos from one SATA3 SSD to another. 10GBE would be cool, but not entirely necessary.

  6. Re:electronic voteing makes it easier to cheat and on New York City Wants To Revive Old Voting Machines · · Score: 2

    ballet box stuffing.

    I hope they don't do this regularly. If I pay for a box seat at the ballet, I sure don't want to be sitting on somebody's lap!

  7. Re:Billion on Planetary Resources To Build Crowdfunded Public Space Telescope · · Score: 1

    They claim to have already designed and built the thing (and have some pictures of a plausible-looking prototype). They just need your hard-earned cash to actually put it into space and build the web portal, [sarcasm]because they forgot about that part in their original budget[/sarcasm]. I feel like the kickstarter page is a publicity stunt instead of a necessary fundraising tool. It's also terribly disingenuous of them to post Hubble images and say "you can take pictures of these" (which most people read as "like these"), implying that their 15cm "main optic" flying at the lowest possible orbit will get anywhere near that amount of pointing stability or resolution.

    That said, anything that makes people think about space science, or even make them feel they have a financial stake in it is probably a good thing.

  8. Re:bad day to be blind. on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 0

    He meant Naked Supermodel Watching Day, which is in fact every day. A bunch of naked dudes in their basements watching supermodel videos on the internet.

  9. Re:ToS: can't host any type of server on FiOS User Finds Limit of 'Unlimited' Data Plan: 77 TB/Month · · Score: 0

    The whole point of the TOS is to make everyone violate it so they can terminate anyone for any reason at any time.

  10. Re:realization on FiOS User Finds Limit of 'Unlimited' Data Plan: 77 TB/Month · · Score: 1

    This. You can enjoy FIOS and run a personal server without being a f**king data center. I have 150/65, bit torrent, netflix, ssh, ftp, minecraft, three techie roommates, but we rarely go over 2TB/month. Once I left a bunch of things seeding and my brother downloaded a ton of anime and we hit 4TB. Mostly I just love downloading the 300GB/month we use at 10 mega BYTES per second.

  11. Re:And we don't need the man in the middle indeed. on N. Carolina May Ban Tesla Sales To Prevent "Unfair Competition" · · Score: 1

    The only reason franchised dealers were created in the first place was so manufacturers could "shift the responsibility for providing the land, buildings and inventory to dealers". The whole point of the franchise model is so manufacturers can screw their dealers whenever they like.

    From the link, this hilarious quote: "Even a small dealership requires an investment of between $12 million and $16 million. ... No successful auto manufacturer could or would want to assume the financial burden of taking over those operational." (He then goes on to claim that dealerships magically produce tax money and jobs that somehow wouldn't exist in a company store or end up back in the consumers' pockets.)

    So when a manufacturer comes along with a product that actually makes it cost-effective to properly invest in their customer experience, they get cut out simply because previous companies were too cheap to do it themselves.

  12. Re:Bad for us = Good for gov't on Paul's Call To Abolish the TSA, One Year Later · · Score: 1

    Good news! Your theory is being tested in practice as we speak. Hope you are pleased with the results.

  13. Re:Terrible move on In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper · · Score: 2

    Does Comcast need to rebuild all their infrastructure too? There may not be any landline game in town for some time.

    The engineers at Verizon aren't complete idiots, you know. I'm sure they've calculated the cost of adding some cells to handle the demand and found it cheaper than running new copper. And if the business drones are worth the suits on their backs they'll be worried about Comcast poaching customers, so they wouldn't balk at *some* investment to recover from a disaster with some of their reputation intact.

  14. Re:Power failures? on In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper · · Score: 2

    This is not necessarily true anymore. Several times our neighbors' phones went out with the power, but our FIOS phone and cell phones still worked (and continued to work when I plugged our terminal into a bigger UPS). I chalk it up to a bad/insufficient UPS on the copper-to-fiber switches somewhere upstream. We don't get copper back to the switch board anymore.

    Also, what Verizon didn't say was how many customers in the town were actually subscribed to copper landlines before the storm. It's possibly most of them had cut the cord already.

  15. Re:Great an image laundering scheme for big busine on UK Passes "Instagram Act" · · Score: 5, Funny

    That is a good point about the treaties. Thus the law is only applicable in the hilarious circumstance where they can say to a judge, "We know the owner is a U.K. citizen, but we don't know who."

  16. Re:they are doing it backwards! on UK Passes "Instagram Act" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're making YOUR content usable by corporations. What they are NOT doing is applying the same standard to works of corporations that no longer want your money so that Google Books et. al. can serve them up to the masses. Not surprising at all, really.

    Wouldn't it be awesome if as soon as the original rights holder stopped offering a work for convenient sale, it entered the public domain? Sure, there are a zillion loopholes in that idea, but still...

  17. Re:I won't be buying one... on New Smart Gun Company Hopes To Begin Production This Summer · · Score: 1, Troll

    Actually, statistics work in these guys' favor. It's the old defense vs. offense saying: sure, you want it to fire at that one particular second every 5 years, but the other 157679999 seconds you're sure as hell don't want it going off. It makes sense to put more effort into stopping false positives than false negatives. You might then ask, "Why have a gun if its only purpose is to be NOT fired", and then I ask, "Why indeed"? But that is a different conversation.

    Guns kept in the home for "self protection" are alarmingly likely to be used against their owners, either by burglars who find them first, children by accident, or the owner himself for suicide (not that this tech would prevent that). Even the latest James Bond movie made this point, where the first time anyone pulled the trigger on his smart gun it was the (very disappointed) bad guy pointing it at Bond's head. Yes, not firing when you want it to is bad, but it is just as bad if not worse to have it fired against your will, especially in situations where it is the only firearm in the fight.

    Their example of using the tech in a war zone is both good and bad, since it prevents you from being ambushed and shot with your own weapons, or stolen supplies arming the enemy. But you couldn't use them with gloves on, burned fingers or a number of other situations. A way to temporarily disable the fingerprint recognition would be a step toward your "false positive rather than false negative" idea.

    That said, don't compare the reliability of this electronic gun with the reliability of a PC or cell phone. They had better be using military grade components and have a battery that lasts for years of use. And the user had better stick to whatever maintenance schedule required by the manufacturer, in which the battery would need replacing every few years. If they can't be bothered to do that then they have no business owning any kind of gun, smart or otherwise.

  18. Re:Interesting comparissons on Cracked Game Released To Get Back At Pirates · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    They appeared to pay the most because Notch and his gang always fight for the top spot and raise the average.

  19. Re:Sustainable? on Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting · · Score: 1

    Well duh, we're in a closed, bounded system so any variable, including pollution, is going to have a maximum value. In our case, that maximum is somewhere north of turning every body of fresh water on the planet into a chemical sewage pit, every piece of arable land into an oily run-off field, and every forest into an acidic open wildlife graveyard. THAT would be hard to dilute without, say, dumping the oceans of Europa onto our crazy asses.

  20. Re:Sustainable? on Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting · · Score: 1

    But there's only so much you can dilute on our tiny little planet...

  21. Re:fiber is fragile on USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W · · Score: 1

    Is this something you know for a fact? Because copper digital cables have grounds in them too, and it's not just the signal on the cable that gets affected once you set up a resonating network.

  22. Re: i predict a 10x surge in replacent parts on USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W · · Score: 1

    Unplugging a 5-amp 20V connection is still going to produce some arcing. That takes a toll on both connectors, so you could easily end up with a warranty nightmare if there isn't a suitable plug-preemption mechanism going on.

  23. Re:fiber is fragile on USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The main benefit of TOSlink is avoiding ground loops in audio systems. This is especially important if you have a long run between ends of the building with a significant resistance in the building ground system between them.

  24. Editors, do they exist? on Antares Rocket Launch Scrubbed · · Score: 4, Informative

    SpaceX FALCON 9 rocket!!! The Dragon capsule is just what goes on top.

  25. Re:Mentioned this last week on How NASA Brought the F-1 Rocket Engine Back To Life · · Score: 1

    Hence why our Mars rovers have progressively greater amounts of automatic navigation functions (some being uploaded years into operation). The lag doesn't matter so much if the robot can get from point A to point B all by itself. The humans just have to decide where to send it and what to look at when it gets there. They are even working on autonomous geologist programs designed to identify interesting rocks and photograph them without human intervention. Robots will only get smarter. Humans need just as much food, water, and air as they ever will.