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  1. Re:Search for life on NASA Appointed Team Set Out Priorities For a Europa Surface Mission · · Score: 1

    It still matters if you care where the species originated. For example, the difference between Europa (a) having originated life completely independently of Earth and (b) having been contaminated by life from earth and then evolved separately is very significant.

  2. Re:Search for life on NASA Appointed Team Set Out Priorities For a Europa Surface Mission · · Score: 2

    I read recently that NASA basically catalogs what bacteria it can't eradicate and if it finds those bacteria on an alien planet will have to assume the source was contamination. I'm not sure how they'd plan to handle centuries from now if they found a descendent bacteria that was mostly unrecognizable from the original, cataloged bacteria.

  3. Re:There is only one way... on Ask Slashdot: IT Staff Handovers -- How To Take Over From an Outgoing Sys Admin? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You might get a couple of freebies with his contact info but I suspect it'd be better policy for an installation this size to set up a paid arrangement with the outgoing sysadmin. I'm not in IT so I don't know what precedents there are around this, but relying on him to reply for free just seems against human nature.

  4. Auditability on NSA Director Defends Surveillance To Unsympathetic Black Hat Crowd · · Score: 1

    There is 100 percent auditability on what we do.

    How does that jibe with the recent story NSA Can't Search Its Own Email

  5. Re:Ray Tracing is a terrible technique on Scientists Demonstrate Ultra-Fast Magnetite Electrical Switch · · Score: 1

    s/idiots/people/
    s/intellect/knowledge/
    FTFY.

  6. Re:Tag index page on Ask Slashdot: Tags and Tagging, What Is the Best Way Forward? · · Score: 1

    Allow users to specify tags for a story and display the most commonly entered tags. It then becomes a form of commenting, in a way. "upvote" could be just another tag.

  7. Imagine using data analytics to predict what comedy bits might do better. Would it be comedy along the lines of which people have already seen? I don't think so - jokes don't get funnier the more you tell them. Perhaps the same goes for movies? We need more novel story lines.

  8. Re:Up to 50 feet? on Sunken WWI U-Boats a Bonanza For Historians · · Score: 1

    Kind of scary how shallow they could go. With a sub height of about 21 feet, that's about 15 feet of water above and below which doesn't leave a lot of margin for error.

  9. Re:And then in a thousand years on Star Wars City Doomed By Sand Dunes · · Score: 1

    "The barchan will probably continue on its journey past the city site, which in due course will re-emerge from the sand, but it is anticipated that it will not remain unscathed." Another interesting tidbit: "persons ~ 1.6 m tall atop the dune (~ 35 pixels) act as a scale bar to estimate the dune height (135 pixels) as ~ 6.5 m high". That's a lot of sand.

  10. Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. on Citing Snowden Leaks, Russia Again Demands UN Takeover of Internet · · Score: 1

    Given that US politics is controlled by corporations to a large degree, I'd be asking what corporations have a vested interest in making sure they^Wthe USA retains control of the Internet.

  11. grave danger on Mastermind of 9/11 Attacks Designs a Secret Vacuum Cleaner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It sounds ridiculous, but answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger

    This kind of hyperbole is what makes people ignore warnings.

  12. Re:Redesign is not the solution on Upside-Down Sensors Caused Proton-M Rocket Crash · · Score: 1

    Taking that to its logical conclusion, you could assemble the entire rocket upside down. At some point there has to be a base to reference everything else from.

  13. Re:Retroactively? on Disney's Titling Problem With Its Star Wars Movies · · Score: 1

    How do novels do it? There must be plenty of Star Wars novels out there.

  14. Re:head transplant, or body transplant? on Neuroscientist: First-Ever Human Head Transplant Is Now Possible · · Score: 1
    From http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/two-lungs-one-heart1.htm:

    Interestingly, when we are in the embryonic stage of development, we actually do have two hearts. The heart primordia (which describes the stage of the heart's development) in the embryonic stage is actually two hearts, which eventually fuse together into one heart with four chambers. Embryologists in the 1920s and '30s kept the heart primordia from fusing in embryonic frogs, and the frogs that grew up developed two hearts. The same also goes for our eyes. We begin with one primordia of the eye, which eventually separates to form two. If the primordia is kept from splitting, one central eye develops, like a cyclops, says Dr. Neff.

    A quick web search reveals people who actually do (or did) have two hearts. Here's one about a guy who was born with 3 legs and two hearts!

    In the summer of 1906 George Lippert died of tuberculosis at the age 62. The autopsy revealed his two hearts and also showed that one heart died two to three weeks before his eventual death. Doctors declared that if Lippert had not had tuberculosis he could have easy lived on for many years. He would have been sustained by his secondary heart.

  15. Re:head transplant, or body transplant? on Neuroscientist: First-Ever Human Head Transplant Is Now Possible · · Score: 1

    An alternative to a super reliable pump is an array of less reliable pumps (like a RAID in hard disk terminology). If one pump fails, you can switch it out while the other pumps keep the blood flowing. Might want to have them mounted outside the body to make replacement easy.

  16. Re:Microsoft seem determined on Microsoft XBox One Kinect Will Not Work On Windows PCs · · Score: 1

    What all the big 3 gaming consoles seem to be lacking is the ability to make menu selections with either the motion controller or the regular controller. Too time consuming when you have to home-in on a menu selection for each of several levels of menus. Let me use the regular controller for that stuff and keep the dedicated motion selection for the gameplay itself.

  17. Re:My usual question, not answered thus far... on Mining the Heavens: In Conversation With Planetary Resources' Chief Engineer · · Score: 1

    Suppose an asteroid's path is changed during mining, putting it on a collision course with Earth (not necessarily on the first pass).

  18. Re:Treason on Facebook and Microsoft Disclose Government Requests For User Data · · Score: 1
  19. Re:Wi-Fi toothpick on Wi-Fi Light Bulbs Shipping Soon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems to me that wifi-enabling the light switch would be more useful and cost-effective (for most people) than doing the same to the bulb.

  20. Re:Isn't he getting.... on Arnold Schwarzenegger Will Be Back As the Terminator · · Score: 2

    Hopefully he doesn't fall into the "been here, done that" groove that so many older action hero actors seem to fall into (I'm looking at you, Bruce Willis). It's not exciting to watch. Make it a fresh challenge and put your soul into it.

  21. Re:As An American on New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions · · Score: 1

    If the NSA don't tell people what they're capable of or their algorithms, the problem space for criminals becomes much larger than if they know they have to avoid doing X, Y, and Z in order to avoid getting caught. I'm not trying to defend this huge spying dragnet, but perhaps that's part of the thinking behind keeping it so secret. The IRS doesn't publish its algorithms to find tax cheats, either, otherwise it would be much easier to get away with it. You could call that security through obscurity, I suppose, so maybe there's a way to improve security by allowing wider scrutiny, identifying loopholes and closing them.

  22. Re:I can see it now... on New Bill Would Declassify FISC Opinions · · Score: 1

    How about forced declassification of any policy/program involving more than, say, 5000 people. That way actions on targetted individuals stay secret but actions on a populace (local or foreign) must be made known.

  23. Re:Rape joke on Sony's PS4 To Have Less Stringent DRM Than Microsoft's Xbox One · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Someone's got their Microsoft hate-on with this "rape joke" insinuation. They should be sued for slander and/or defamation of character.

  24. Links to patents on Ask Personal Audio's James Logan About Patents, Playlists, and Podcasts · · Score: 4, Informative
  25. Just because a private company was smart enough to protect its own business by investing in appropriate infrastructure for its chosen location doesn't mean the rest of the area (let alone all us yankees) will follow suit.

    Power, Internet connections, food, water. They've built a castle (complete with inner walls!) and a tornado is providing the siege. How long can they last?