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User: SteveAstro

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Comments · 212

  1. Re:ProjectFi on Ask Slashdot: Best Option For a Touring Band With Mobile Data? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I think Fi is their best option, for $120/day for 12Gig. 130 for 13 etc etc.

  2. From WikiPedia

    The flood discharge at the peak of an eruption in 1755 has been estimated at 200,000–400,000 m3/s (7.1-14.1 million cu ft/sec), comparable to the combined average discharge of the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, and Yangtze rivers (about 266,000 m3/s (9.4 million cu ft/sec)).

    THAT is a lot of warm water.

  3. Re:Illegal Age-ism Admitted in the Press! on Dyson Will Spend $1.4 Billion, Enlist 3,000 Engineers To Build a Better Battery (digitaltrends.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    DAMN I wish I had karma to give you. I am by far the oldest member of my R+D team, and by far the most innovative and risk averse.

    James Dyson is an asshole. He bleats about wanting more engineers, but he only want the cheap young ones he can pay as little as possible and toss aside. He isn't even a qualified engineer himself. People like Dyson say we need more engineers, but when the UK starting salary for grad engineers is between 26- 30K GBP , they are too cheap. Until we can make a real scarcity of engineers that isn't going to change

  4. Re:The Fine Print on Justice Department Shuts Down Huge Asset Forfeiture Program · · Score: 1

    This is dumber than "I've done nothing that I want to hide", but not by much.

  5. Re:The Arctic is NOT doomed on NASA's Ten-Year Mission To Study All the Ways the Arctic Is Doomed · · Score: 1

    In the 1820s, Stephenson built the world's very first passenger railroad across a bog. If it wasn't impossible in 1820, its not impossible now...

  6. Re:Wow, Yet Another Harrassment Narrative on The Town That Banned Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Amish ?
    Bullshit. I know Amish guys in Central Pa with better texting deals for their cellulars than me. And they have more power tools than me.

  7. Re:Yes on Ask Slashdot: Should I Let My Kids Become American Citizens? · · Score: 1

    What a delicious piece of irony. Well done.

  8. Re:Mass production ? on Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible To Use · · Score: 2

    And from the tiny diamonds before we can now grow large gem quality ones. Same with Graphene, and a long way from the Samsung process.

  9. Mass production ? on Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible To Use · · Score: 5, Informative

    And yet, I read about a team in Cambridge in the UK who have a new low temperature process that can create graphene in industrial quantities.

    http://cambridgenanosystems.co...

  10. Re:Let's talk about sex, baby on Overly Familiar Sci-Fi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which is rather Stross' point. Here is an example where the cultural norm is wildly different from your own, and you can't imagine it. It might be perfectly acceptable in that culture to say "not interested", it was also important, in the context of the culture Bujold was describing, for reproduction to be controlled, because of extremely limited resources under a dome colony. An extra mouth to feed, and lungs to breath the air was significant to everyone's resources.

  11. Re:Jonathan Coulton Tweeted about getting one. on Boo! The House Majority PAC Is Watching You · · Score: 1
  12. Re:Not New on Boo! The House Majority PAC Is Watching You · · Score: 1
  13. Re:Dobsonian on Slashdot Asks: Cheap But Reasonable Telescopes for Kids? · · Score: 1

    The steppers are now all "microstepped", which basically means you don't see quantisation from the drives, but you can't "beat" field rotation, and you'd be surprised how few de-rotators are out there - the imaging guys pretty well all use equatorials, with their attendant problems.

    ALL mounts have their issues - an equatorial can't view the area around the celestial pole, and is rarely as stiff as an alt-az for the money. An Alt-az has the field rotation issue, and can't view its zenith.

    Mount wars get like computer language wars....

  14. Re:Dobsonian on Slashdot Asks: Cheap But Reasonable Telescopes for Kids? · · Score: 1

    The trouble with Alt-az mounts for imaging is the field rotation, which changes with the scope position, take 10 minute exposures, and you're screwed.

  15. Re: Dobsonian on Slashdot Asks: Cheap But Reasonable Telescopes for Kids? · · Score: 1

    He means the late John Dobson.
    I was pretty sure he was immortal. I was wrong.

  16. Re:Regrets on BBC and FACT Shut Down Doctor Who Fansite · · Score: 1

    You'd think so wouldn't you, but no, its not, and the BBC is VERY cagey about rights management.

  17. Not good for acute night vision. on Enthusiast Opts For $2200 Laser Eye Surgery To Enhance Oculus Rift Experience · · Score: 1

    One of the problems of Lasik is the size of the corrected pupil is often not as large as that of your fully dark adapted pupil, and, as an amateur astronomer, it leaves artefacts in your field of view that are objectionable.

  18. Re:Arms race on Researchers Find "Achilles Heel" of Drug Resistant Bacteria · · Score: 1

    FTFA This wouldn't be an antibiotic, and it seems to happen outside the cell's defensive mechanisms that they can inherit.

  19. Re:A Formula only an Actuary could Love on Why You Shouldn't Use Spreadsheets For Important Work · · Score: 1

    ++++Redo from start
    Out of cheese error

  20. Re:Yes! No more mandates! on Gun Rights Groups Say They Don't Oppose Smart Guns, Just Mandates · · Score: 1

    ...or using the steering wheel....

  21. Re:Good old morphine? on Controversial Execution In Ohio Uses New Lethal Drug Combination · · Score: 1

    It takes a surprisingly long time to wash a cabinet out with inert gas. I have an instrument which has to work in an anoxic environment, its only about 2.5 cubic feet, but it takes a good 20 minutes to clear down. A box big enough for a man ?

  22. Re:If that wasn't crueal and unreasonable... on Controversial Execution In Ohio Uses New Lethal Drug Combination · · Score: 1

    I think hanging severs the spinal cord, so your're paralysed....while you suffocate to death. Enough people survive dislocation of the neck - Chris Reeves is the most obvious case - to know that death doesn't follow.

  23. Legend on Telescope Designer and Astronomer John Dobson, 1915-2014 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another, probably apocryphal, story was John claimed to have star tested a scope using the glint of light off the eye of a blackbird, perched on a telephone wire down the street - really, really good telescope makers can identify the condition and quality of a mirror by studying the shape of the image from the scope just inside, and just outside focus.

  24. Re:Nice guy on Telescope Designer and Astronomer John Dobson, 1915-2014 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    John stayed with us in the UK back in 2002 - that Wikipedia article picture should have me just out of shot... We took him to see the city of Chester - which John insisted on seeing the city walls "The last city I saw with walls was Beijing in 1920" I think he said. We took him to North Wales to see the sights there, and then he stayed in my home for a couple of memorable nights, when he baby-sat my eldest son while I rushed my baby son to the ER having found him bleeding and screaming after climbing a bookcase and cutting his head open. "John, I really, really need to get this little guy to hospital. Can you tell my wife where we've gone and look after this one ? " "Aw, sure, no problem". I came back to find John reading a book to my son. I have video of John "lassoing" the kids out in the yard with a rope he always carried to demonstrate with !

    One of those visits that will stay with me forever- the youngest son is now 13, and still has the scar......

  25. Re:Bad call on Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham · · Score: 1

    Not many atheists go to warlord controlled countries to delivery medical supplies while unarmed and unprotected. Christians do and that resonates with people.

    No, what happens is that many "atheists" go to warlord controlled countries etc , etc, they just don't feel any need to mouth off about why they are doing it, and they are only doing it because they believe in a sky-fairy.