And thus, this well intentioned invention will lead to the future envisioned in Disney's "Wall-E".
Frankly, I've never seen a more depressing movie in my life. I hope they save these Weebots for only the kids that really need them. Anything else is a lazy, slippery slope.
Hmm. I looked on your linked Amtrak website for tickets for tomorrow from New York to Los Angeles, and I get $615, plus it takes 109 hours. I'll stick with the more 'free market' airline. Thanks.
If there is a king of efficiency and lost cost in distribution and retail sales, it is Wal-Mart. You don't think they are just going to sit there and do nothing while Amazon moves in, do you?
This is a technology problem, not a policy problem. The New Horizons probe is doing a flyby because that is currently the _only_ way to get a probe near far away Pluto. The probe is going extremely fast and in order to decelerate into orbit of such a small planet, you'd need to be taking along a lot more fuel than that probe has on board. Alternately, you could take a much slower and longer (decades if not hundreds of years) lower energy transfer orbit.
Exactly! DRONES ARE NOT ROBOTS. THEY HAVE PILOTS!!!
God, how stupid are so many people, especially reporters, that they don't seem to get that? Spoofing a GPS signal does not give you control over the pilot.
I lost my entire hard copy music collection in a house fire back in 2008. I took the insurance money for all the CDs and kept it. Fortunately, my computer hard drive survived the fire, so I still had the ripped MP3s, but in the four years since, I've only bought a handful of new albums/songs. Nonetheless, I actually listen to a much wider variety of music, and more often now too - all via streaming.
Pandora is easy, free, and available just about anywhere I go. I really can't rationalize paying for what I can get for free.
I think you need to switch doctors. My Advair and Albuterol prescriptions have always come with refills that are good for one year. At most, I go see the doc for my asthma every six months. This is still annoying for a well controlled chronic condition I've had for 40 years, but hardly the end of the world.
OTC status for drugs could be good or bad. For me and my allergies, what used to be a $30/month Zyrtec or Claritin prescription copay is now down to $16 for a whole year's supply of a generic version at Costco. Big win for me.
What I'd really like to know is why the hell Advair and Albuterol are still under patent? I've been taking both for well over 15 years.
But is an employer asking for your transcript really that common? It has never happened to me in the 20 years since I graduated. After my first job, nobody cared other than that I had a degree in my field, and not one employer since then has checked just to see if I was lying about it.
Now grad school, sure they'll want your transcript, but if you can't pay your undergrad loans, is borrowing a ton more money and going to grad school really a good idea?
Are you people really that stupid to think that both SpaceX and NASA haven't spent tens of thousands of man hours planning, testing, retesting, and triple testing this docking procedure? Are you aware that the only reason it takes two people to do the docking is that NASA won't _allow_ SpaceX to do the docking automatically like the Russian Soyuz? Instead, they have to pull up close to the station, and then get grabbed by the robot arm, for SAFETY.
Do you have any idea how many ex-NASA and space shuttle contractors have been hired by SpaceX? Do you know how many former astronauts work there?
God, it is like some people think Elon Musk hired a bunch of high school rocket club kids and is being allowed to dock with the space station based on plans drawn on the back of a napkin.
Seconded. I want to READ stories on Slashdot. I do not want to watch another damn video, and I fail to understand why everyone seems to want to turn the entire Internet into TV 2.0 or something. Watching a video takes vastly more of my time than reading an interesting article about something, plus the intelligence level of most online video is way lower.
Yep. I have a blind friend who can text and do email on his iPhone just fine. All it requires is a 'bumpy' screen overlay that matches the soft keyboard in portrait display mode. The necessary software settings are built-in out of the box with iOS. All of his messages and notifications are read aloud to him by the phone.
I suppose this would be more exciting if I could still wear contacts. Sjogren's Syndrome has given me 20% of normal tear volume, and I have plugs in my tear ducts to keep what little moisture my eyes do produce from draining away so fast. I never go anywhere without a bottle of eye drops.
While I'm an odd exception, glasses would be far more practical and usable by more people. Just get Oakley to make a pair and get ready to profit!
Yep, it sucks. My recommended work commute by Denver's Regional Transportation District takes three transfers, 2.5 hours, and is followed by "walk the remaining 3 miles" (yes, really). I can drive the same route in 40 minutes most days, so I do.
I'd love to be able to sit back and let someone else drive for me, but not at that cost.
When I last worked around a satellite groundstation (Space Imaging's IKONOS) 10 years ago, the satellite control systems were damn sure not connected to the internet. Communications were encrypted and reasonable physical security measures were in place too.
Why the Hell would you connect something critical like satellite control or a nuclear reactor control system to the Internet?
There are alternatives to ridiculously priced, private 4-year colleges. How about spending your first two years at your local community college?
My son is doing exactly this right now, taking 14 credit hours this semester while working 20 hours a week changing oil and tires. For added fun, he lives with his Grandmother and his Aunt, because they are close to the college.
In another 18 months, he will graduate with an associates degree and credits that will transfer to any college in the state, for a total student loan debt of about $14k. If he wants to, he can go on to a four year school and still save a boatload of money versus the people borrowing $20k or more a year for 4+ years.
It amazes me that more people don't do this. I wish I had done it myself.
Well, I rather like Paolini. He's a very young writer, and maturing as he writes. That being said, he is most definitely a fantasy writer, not a science fiction writer. The real world is not a book store or a library, and we shouldn't confuse the two genres.
Personally, I find a lot of the 'revolutionary' talk by the Occupy Wall Street folks disturbing.
While I am sympathetic to some of their concerns, by no means do I share all of them. For that matter, they need to get a handle on what their concerns are. It seems like they are quickly becoming a magnet for all sorts of far left fringe groups. In that way, perhaps, it is somewhat like a polar opposite of the Tea Party movement.
Regardless, we have a system for changing things in this country and it starts with voting. If these people think they are going to stir things up and start some sort of Great Socialist Revolution, they are going to find out damn quick that they are NOT supported by 99% of the population.
The 'entrenched players' can't even conceive of how to do a space vehicle without making it a cost-plus contract so that they can rake in the overruns. They were blindsided by SpaceX years ago, and are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do besides petition Congress to keep paying them.
The DNA of the old guard military-aerospace companies is so hardwired to bureacratic, massive management overhead thinking that they cannot adapt.
Hollywood is suffering from story writing fatigue (or good story writing fatigue). How many decades more this will continue is anyone's guess.
As 'Avatar' proved all too well, no amount of glitzy special effects and 3-D can make up for bad writing.
Personally, I find the superhero stuff more interesting than most Hollywood dreck, but the quality of the screenwriting and casting all too often leaves much to be desired. "Van Wilder" as the Green Lantern? Seriously??
Your smartphone is a mobile computer that also makes phone calls. I'm using my Samsung Captivate (with CyanogenMod thank you very much) more and more for things I used to depend on my home PC for.
While I think the Motorola Atrix is a bit of an overpriced dud, I think that this type of device is the future. 'Phones' are more and more going to be people's primary computing devices. I say bring on all the cores and memory they can handle. We'll make use of them when we dock the 'phone' at work or home to write a paper, surf the web, or play that cool new FPS.
I've read the articles and seen what they are sending, and I don't care. With Pandora, I get all my music for free, and I'm willing to trade some info for that.
I remain curious as to how Android knows my gender, however. Sure, you could guess from my name, but I'm pretty sure there isn't a checkbox for "sex" anywhere in my phone config. Regardless, it wasn't a secret anyway.:)
What an amazingly inaccurate summary. The rocket will be left to fall back into the ocean/atmosphere, while it has enough cargo capacity (2X that of the space shuttle to LEO) to launch something that could, conceivably, go to Mars and back.
Personally, I'm expecting Bigelow to be the first customer.
Slashdot Mirror
And thus, this well intentioned invention will lead to the future envisioned in Disney's "Wall-E".
Frankly, I've never seen a more depressing movie in my life. I hope they save these Weebots for only the kids that really need them. Anything else is a lazy, slippery slope.
Necron69
Hmm. I looked on your linked Amtrak website for tickets for tomorrow from New York to Los Angeles, and I get $615, plus it takes 109 hours. I'll stick with the more 'free market' airline. Thanks.
Necron69
If there is a king of efficiency and lost cost in distribution and retail sales, it is Wal-Mart. You don't think they are just going to sit there and do nothing while Amazon moves in, do you?
Necron69
This is a technology problem, not a policy problem. The New Horizons probe is doing a flyby because that is currently the _only_ way to get a probe near far away Pluto. The probe is going extremely fast and in order to decelerate into orbit of such a small planet, you'd need to be taking along a lot more fuel than that probe has on board. Alternately, you could take a much slower and longer (decades if not hundreds of years) lower energy transfer orbit.
This isn't Star Trek. NASA has to deal with real physics. Start here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php
Necron69
Exactly! DRONES ARE NOT ROBOTS. THEY HAVE PILOTS!!!
God, how stupid are so many people, especially reporters, that they don't seem to get that? Spoofing a GPS signal does not give you control over the pilot.
Necron69
I lost my entire hard copy music collection in a house fire back in 2008. I took the insurance money for all the CDs and kept it. Fortunately, my computer hard drive survived the fire, so I still had the ripped MP3s, but in the four years since, I've only bought a handful of new albums/songs. Nonetheless, I actually listen to a much wider variety of music, and more often now too - all via streaming.
Pandora is easy, free, and available just about anywhere I go. I really can't rationalize paying for what I can get for free.
Necron69
I think you need to switch doctors. My Advair and Albuterol prescriptions have always come with refills that are good for one year. At most, I go see the doc for my asthma every six months. This is still annoying for a well controlled chronic condition I've had for 40 years, but hardly the end of the world.
OTC status for drugs could be good or bad. For me and my allergies, what used to be a $30/month Zyrtec or Claritin prescription copay is now down to $16 for a whole year's supply of a generic version at Costco. Big win for me.
What I'd really like to know is why the hell Advair and Albuterol are still under patent? I've been taking both for well over 15 years.
Necron69
But is an employer asking for your transcript really that common? It has never happened to me in the 20 years since I graduated. After my first job, nobody cared other than that I had a degree in my field, and not one employer since then has checked just to see if I was lying about it.
Now grad school, sure they'll want your transcript, but if you can't pay your undergrad loans, is borrowing a ton more money and going to grad school really a good idea?
Necron69
Are you people really that stupid to think that both SpaceX and NASA haven't spent tens of thousands of man hours planning, testing, retesting, and triple testing this docking procedure? Are you aware that the only reason it takes two people to do the docking is that NASA won't _allow_ SpaceX to do the docking automatically like the Russian Soyuz? Instead, they have to pull up close to the station, and then get grabbed by the robot arm, for SAFETY.
Do you have any idea how many ex-NASA and space shuttle contractors have been hired by SpaceX? Do you know how many former astronauts work there?
God, it is like some people think Elon Musk hired a bunch of high school rocket club kids and is being allowed to dock with the space station based on plans drawn on the back of a napkin.
Get a freaking clue, people.
- Necron69
Seconded. I want to READ stories on Slashdot. I do not want to watch another damn video, and I fail to understand why everyone seems to want to turn the entire Internet into TV 2.0 or something. Watching a video takes vastly more of my time than reading an interesting article about something, plus the intelligence level of most online video is way lower.
- Necron69
Yep. I have a blind friend who can text and do email on his iPhone just fine. All it requires is a 'bumpy' screen overlay that matches the soft keyboard in portrait display mode. The necessary software settings are built-in out of the box with iOS. All of his messages and notifications are read aloud to him by the phone.
Necron69
I have to agree. I've seen too many people quit jobs 'on a whim' and screw up their lives (and their family's) permanently.
All jobs suck at one level or another. Grow up, suck it up, and keep working. You need to learn to work to live, not live to work.
Necron69
I suppose this would be more exciting if I could still wear contacts. Sjogren's Syndrome has given me 20% of normal tear volume, and I have plugs in my tear ducts to keep what little moisture my eyes do produce from draining away so fast. I never go anywhere without a bottle of eye drops.
While I'm an odd exception, glasses would be far more practical and usable by more people. Just get Oakley to make a pair and get ready to profit!
Necron69
Yep, it sucks. My recommended work commute by Denver's Regional Transportation District takes three transfers, 2.5 hours, and is followed by "walk the remaining 3 miles" (yes, really). I can drive the same route in 40 minutes most days, so I do.
I'd love to be able to sit back and let someone else drive for me, but not at that cost.
Necron69
When I last worked around a satellite groundstation (Space Imaging's IKONOS) 10 years ago, the satellite control systems were damn sure not connected to the internet. Communications were encrypted and reasonable physical security measures were in place too.
Why the Hell would you connect something critical like satellite control or a nuclear reactor control system to the Internet?
This defies logic.
Necron69
There are alternatives to ridiculously priced, private 4-year colleges. How about spending your first two years at your local community college?
My son is doing exactly this right now, taking 14 credit hours this semester while working 20 hours a week changing oil and tires. For added fun, he lives with his Grandmother and his Aunt, because they are close to the college.
In another 18 months, he will graduate with an associates degree and credits that will transfer to any college in the state, for a total student loan debt of about $14k. If he wants to, he can go on to a four year school and still save a boatload of money versus the people borrowing $20k or more a year for 4+ years.
It amazes me that more people don't do this. I wish I had done it myself.
Necron69
Well, I rather like Paolini. He's a very young writer, and maturing as he writes. That being said, he is most definitely a fantasy writer, not a science fiction writer. The real world is not a book store or a library, and we shouldn't confuse the two genres.
Necron69
Personally, I find a lot of the 'revolutionary' talk by the Occupy Wall Street folks disturbing.
While I am sympathetic to some of their concerns, by no means do I share all of them. For that matter, they need to get a handle on what their concerns are. It seems like they are quickly becoming a magnet for all sorts of far left fringe groups. In that way, perhaps, it is somewhat like a polar opposite of the Tea Party movement.
Regardless, we have a system for changing things in this country and it starts with voting. If these people think they are going to stir things up and start some sort of Great Socialist Revolution, they are going to find out damn quick that they are NOT supported by 99% of the population.
- Necron69
The 'entrenched players' can't even conceive of how to do a space vehicle without making it a cost-plus contract so that they can rake in the overruns. They were blindsided by SpaceX years ago, and are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do besides petition Congress to keep paying them.
The DNA of the old guard military-aerospace companies is so hardwired to bureacratic, massive management overhead thinking that they cannot adapt.
Necron69
My DVD collection was destroyed by a fire a couple of years ago. I pocketed the cash from the insurance company and never bothered to replace them.
Now I have a Roku w/Netflix and Amazon On Demand. Who needs a disk of any format?
- Necron69
Hollywood is suffering from story writing fatigue (or good story writing fatigue). How many decades more this will continue is anyone's guess.
As 'Avatar' proved all too well, no amount of glitzy special effects and 3-D can make up for bad writing.
Personally, I find the superhero stuff more interesting than most Hollywood dreck, but the quality of the screenwriting and casting all too often leaves much to be desired. "Van Wilder" as the Green Lantern? Seriously??
- Necron69
I know many people at HP who worked on the never released PA-RISC version too. Windows 2008 R2 is supported on Itanium right now.
Windows had been a multi-platform OS since the NT days. This is absolutely nothing new for anyone not fresh out of college.
Necron69
Your smartphone is a mobile computer that also makes phone calls. I'm using my Samsung Captivate (with CyanogenMod thank you very much) more and more for things I used to depend on my home PC for.
While I think the Motorola Atrix is a bit of an overpriced dud, I think that this type of device is the future. 'Phones' are more and more going to be people's primary computing devices. I say bring on all the cores and memory they can handle. We'll make use of them when we dock the 'phone' at work or home to write a paper, surf the web, or play that cool new FPS.
Necron69
I've read the articles and seen what they are sending, and I don't care. With Pandora, I get all my music for free, and I'm willing to trade some info for that.
I remain curious as to how Android knows my gender, however. Sure, you could guess from my name, but I'm pretty sure there isn't a checkbox for "sex" anywhere in my phone config. Regardless, it wasn't a secret anyway. :)
Necron69
What an amazingly inaccurate summary. The rocket will be left to fall back into the ocean/atmosphere, while it has enough cargo capacity (2X that of the space shuttle to LEO) to launch something that could, conceivably, go to Mars and back.
Personally, I'm expecting Bigelow to be the first customer.
Necron69