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User: Bruce+Perens

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  1. Re:I don't believe anything Elon says on Elon Musk: SpaceX's Mars Rocket Could Fly Short Flights By Next Year · · Score: 1

    You are entirely safe to disbelieve anything Elon says about when something will be done. There are also some things he said would be done that were abandoned. No crewed moon orbital mission on Dragon 2 with Falcon 9 Heavy and two rich guys. No powered landing on the ground with Dragon 2 (although IMO it would be possible to have the legs deploy from the side rather than through the heat-shield and have it work).

    For all that it's really cool, Falcon 9 Heavy might have been a mistake. And this is from someone who went to the launch and paid $200 for the good tickets. It cost them a great deal to get working, and is destined to be supersceded by their next rocket. We might not see that many of them ever fly.

    And I think the cost and time estimates for hyperloop are bonkers, and Boring Co. might also be grossly underestimating cost. If you look at the latest videos about Boring Co., you will notice that it's not hyperloop. Which IMO means it might work :-)

  2. Re: We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    If you look at the AAA cost breakdown you can see where the money goes. That turns out to be reasonable cost of ownership of a new car over its lifetime. People who are considering this issue don't necessarily even count the cost of their insurance. There's also a significant cost to the credit in buying a new car. Don't know where your money is going from week to week? Probably a good deal of it is going to your automobile.

  3. Re: fcc? on FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites · · Score: 1

    That probably has something to do with the fact that Europe isn't on the equator. Launching from the equator or as close as possible, like Florida, gives you a boost because of the speed of the Earth's rotation.

  4. There are some significant technical challenges to a 400 mile long evacuated tunnel. And you probably need three of them to make it practical, one for each direction and one to be down for service while the other two operate. Also all of the drawings I've seen are about cars in very tight tubes with no arrangement for evacuation of the people aboard, and just what happens from a derailment is still up in the air.

  5. Re: We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    Actually, the lowest I got on Kayak was $86, and that's using your own insurance.

    Then add in the cost of a driver. You aren't driving the train, and you get to do other stuff.

  6. Re:We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    Congratulations on your fast efficient trip. But don't be surprised if the terrorists discover exactly how easy it would be to rent a piece of heavy equipment and very efficiently take out a rail.

    My favorite response to this sort of thing is this entirely accidental equivalent for roads.

  7. Re: We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    Use this URL. For some reason Slashdot's mobile HTML is not presenting a preview button.

  8. Re: We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    You are not counting the real cost of your vehicle, which is probably about $8,500 per year before you drive a mile. You can find more accurate figures here.

  9. Re:We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > Iâ(TM)ll take a plane [from London to Paris] instead. Well, it doesn't really sound like you've had the opportunity. Planes go from airport to airport. The last time I took Eurostar, I went from the center of London to the center of Paris. And took a lot less time than getting to and from each airport.

  10. We still need good trains on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been to a lot of different countries, and it's always ironic how much better their mass transit is than in the U.S. I have rarely had to rent a car or even take a taxi to get anywhere I want to go - outside of the U.S. And it's very rare for me to have to take a bus in another country. Train go everywhere, except in the country I live in.

    Given the insane amounts we spend on airports and aircraft, and roads, there just isn't any justification for not having the good trains they have in other countries. Consider little Switzerland, and its incredible transit systems. Take the train from London to Paris. Nothing you would see in the U.S.

    So-called "smart roads" (which aren't going to work except for those leased vehicles with locked-down hoods) and autonomous vehicles might work for urban transit eventually. For inter-city routes they are still molasses-slow and inefficient.

    And I am not really sanguine about the hyperloop. The safety issues make my mind boggle, and companies are having trouble even getting a model to go fast in one.

  11. Re:Gallant works on smart roads.... on California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete · · Score: 1

    Goofus drives a car. Gallant takes mass transit. Goofus thinks "Smart Roads" mean something. Gallant realizes that they can't be any smarter than the idiot driving his Uber.

  12. It doesn't take scientists to explain a hetrodyne. on Researchers Provide Likely Explanation For the 'Sonic Weapon' Used At the US Embassy In Cuba (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    The explanation of the number of Ph.D. scientists it took to explain "Duh, it's a Hetrodyne!", and then to not even use the correct language (intermodulation distortion is an effect of hetrodyning signals in a supposedly linear circuit, not the hetrodyne itself), is really pathetic.

    You could get a better explanation from the average radio ham in clearer language.

  13. A couple of 1970-style ultrasonic intrusion alarm sensors might make the same sounds by hetrodyning together. It is more than likely that such things could be found in the embassy. The embassy building was constructed in '53 and re-occupied by the U.S. in '77.

    I've seen no credible explanation for the injuries reported to have occurred to personnel there. The U.S. has monitored for various sorts of energy, RF, sound, light, since Theremin's Great Seal Bug (the "Thing") which the post above refers to. The absence of any credible cause makes this difficult to believe in. Sure the Russians and Cubans are capable of this sort of thing, but that the U.S. failed to detect it is difficult to believe.

  14. Re:HOA's aren't all nice on Ask Slashdot: Software To Visualize, Manage Homeowner's Association Projects? · · Score: 1

    Too many bicycles and plants on stairways. I don't think you understand how that sounds to other people.

  15. Re:HOA's aren't all nice on Ask Slashdot: Software To Visualize, Manage Homeowner's Association Projects? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Radio Amateurs don't have the same legal protection. Yet. But given that television antennas are protected, discriminating by the sort of content carried is a legally problematical stance.

  16. HOA's aren't all nice on Ask Slashdot: Software To Visualize, Manage Homeowner's Association Projects? · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Does your HOA restrict antennas? A lot do, and thus I've avoided them all of my life. Ham radio operators should be allowed to live where everyone else lives, and pursue their hobby freely. It's sort of like the HOA has some sort of anti-nerd discrimination. People also have the right to receive television over the air without being constrained to poor indoor antennas.

  17. Re: Proprietary software is not sustainable on The Swype Smartphone Keyboard Is Dead · · Score: 0

    It's evolution when an Open Source project dies. That is how we filter the good ones from the ones nobody else wants to keep maintaining. But the source code is still there for anyone who wants to continue with it.

  18. Re:Proprietary software is not sustainable on The Swype Smartphone Keyboard Is Dead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can take up an Open Source project that's been abandoned. You can even cut and paste from the useful stuff. You can't get at a proprietary one that's locked up, or more likely bitrotted.

  19. Re:Musk's Car vs. The Long Now Clock on Jeff Bezos Shares Video of 10,000-Year Clock Project (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    It's still obviously a car, not a space vehicle, and there it is in space on the end of the second stage. Regardless of the fact that the bearings might not turn any longer, it says something.

  20. Maybe their market dried up... on The Swype Smartphone Keyboard Is Dead · · Score: 2

    The government stopped allowing people to use personal devices on classified military bases any longer, after they saw the maps those things were generating. And an entire market dried up!

  21. Proprietary software is not sustainable on The Swype Smartphone Keyboard Is Dead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Proprietary software is not sustainable, because it's shut down for simple reasons like "it doesn't fit our business direction any longer" or "it's not making money" that would be irrelevant to an Open Source project.

    Unfortunately it could be difficult to persuade Nuance to Open Source this, as they're concerned with holding their intellectual property close and probably would not want to take the expense to separate out Dragon and anything else they want to keep. And they probably don't want to have their patent claims practiced in Open Source.

    The bottom line here is that functions not unlike their swiping keyboard are built into other keyboards, including Google's, and there is Open Source speech recognition now, so maybe nobody needs this. But if enough people do, it would make a good Open Source project.

  22. This could really be fixed with aluminum foil and a few ferrite toroids. Of course a nice metal box would be neater and better ventilated.

  23. Why should it ? It doesn't have a transmitter.

    Actually, it does. It's called an "unintentional radiator" under Part 15 of the FCC regulations, and like any other device with fast switching, it spews noise all over the radio spectrum. This could be resolved with a metal case and proper bypassing of signals on cables where they enter the enclosure. But they don't care enough to do that.

  24. Musk's Car vs. The Long Now Clock on Jeff Bezos Shares Video of 10,000-Year Clock Project (cnet.com) · · Score: 2

    The Long Now Clock could be found by man's successor or people who have survived the fall of civilization. If it's aliens they're thinking of, Elon Musk's car in orbit is a fitting memorial to mankind.

    I think the car's cooler and makes me think more of long-term planning.

  25. It should not be at all controversial that men and women are biologically different and that those differences may be a factor in life choices.

    Well, sure it should be. Because you can't establish what's nature and what is nurture, other than the most basic things like reproduction and size. Women probably make their life choices due to the way they are nurtured, societal norms, and social pressure

    I know enough excellent women scientists, engineers, and lawyers to believe it's just nurture, and these particular women have transcended social pressures (and continue to do so every day).