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User: Seggybop

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Comments · 16

  1. Re:In Soviet Russia on Boeing Suggests Possible Manned Version of the X-37B Space Plane · · Score: 1

    russia was actually first to successfully develop, launch, and recover an unmanned spaceplane 20 years ago.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

  2. Re:Unsurprising on Neil Armstrong To NASA: You're Embarrassing · · Score: 1

    Really dude?
    I'm honestly curious what kind of convoluted alt-history scenario you've concocted that leads to this.

  3. Re:Wait, these are not MY corporations on A Congressman and an Astronaut Propose a New Plan For NASA · · Score: 1

    There were multiple reasons for this, most importantly the SSMEs were routinely used well past their rated thrust efficiency (you hear shuttle pilots being ordered to go to "104%" or higher on most launches) which essentially requires the engines to be completely overhauled and rebuilt after every flight.

    Would you have any source for that? Shuttle main engines at 104% were not running beyond their spec. The final design of the SSME was capable of somewhat more thrust than originally specced, but for the sake of convenience "100%" throttle was calibrated to be the same amount of thrust as 100% of the original intended spec. IIRC the true maximum was 109%, which was indeed beyond normal safe limits and only used for emergencies.

  4. Focal length on Bionic Eyeglasses May Boost Impaired Vision · · Score: 2

    I'm very curious as to how they've managed to display information on conventional-looking glasses that the wearer is actually capable of focusing on. Every time a story like this has come up of some group that developed normal-appearing glasses with a display, it's turned out to be vapor or a useless concept mockup. Existing head-mounted displays all involve bulky prisms/mirrors that push the effective focal length of the image far enough out that the viewer can actually see it. If you simply make a transparent display on the lens itself or attempt to project onto it, a human normally can't focus anywhere near close enough for it to be visible, and this has been the most serious problem with any sort of device like this.

  5. Re:LOL! American Freedom! on Law Professors vs the PROTECT IP Act · · Score: 1

    It helps about as much as any of the "freedoms" we have over here in the US.

  6. Re:"Designers" are taking over. That's the problem on Is Final Cut Pro X Apple's Biggest Mistake In Years? · · Score: 2

    BS. Apple has always equally prioritized design and engineering; that's the primary thing that's always differentiated their products. But even disregarding that, you're ignoring that these buffoon artists and designers are the ones that actually USE software like FCP, and are in fact the ones most vehemently complaining about this new release.

  7. really guys? on Fukushima Radioactive Fallout Nears Chernobyl Levels · · Score: 3, Insightful

    glad to see that slashdot is 100% on board with the media's general nuclear hysteria
    [I don't think I need to explain why "nearing chernobyl levels" is a ridiculous description...]

  8. Re:Purpose... on X-37B Secret Space Plane's Second Launch Today · · Score: 1

    oh man.
    if they used this thing to take a potshot at Kadafi, I can't really express how ridiculously awesome it'd be.

    if nothing else, I'd finially feel like this is really the far-flung futuristic year of AD 2011.

  9. Re:A BIT expensive?! on New Apple MacBook Pro Reviewed · · Score: 2

    are you serious? are you even remotely familiar with the current state of the industry (or even the past 10 years)

    the windows/mac versions of adobe cs have been at parity as long as the cs branding has even been in use (2003). photoshop was available for windows starting with version 2.5. in its current iteration, it's actually slightly ahead of the mac version with some of its less-obvious features (memory management with large files comes to mind), rumored to be due to the delays in development from when the mac version was transitioned to intel.

    it's also rather ridiculous that you refer to it as "crap" -- photoshop is unquestionably far beyond any competition, and the rest of the suite is at least as good as anything else.

  10. for the truly paranoid on Confidential Data Not Safe On Solid State Disks · · Score: 2

    I thought we'd already agreed that the only way to be really sure that your data is gone is to physically destroy the drive. If you've got data that's really so sensitive that someone's going to spend serious resources to extract it, the actual price of a drive is nothing. Smash it and call it good.

  11. Can they actually do this ..? on AMD Sale to Dell Rumored · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My understanding is that currently there's something of an enforced equilibrium between Intel and AMD, wherein Intel needs AMD to exist in a somewhat healthy state in order to avoid being considered a monopoly. If Dell bought AMD, what would happen to that? Would Dell then sell AMD chips to other (competing) manufacturers?

    There might be something similar going on with ATI vs nvidia as well. =/

  12. Imagine Apple doing this? on HP Donates To WebOS's Major Hombrewing Group · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, HP tends to get a lot of crap, but this is pretty awesome. I hope they can keep this up.

  13. Re:Smart people on Why Dumbphones Still Dominate, For Now · · Score: 1

    do we really need to tell you that "realise" is the proper spelling most places outside of the US?

  14. Re:This is retarded. on 19-Year-Old Makes Homemade Solar Death Ray · · Score: 1

    implying he didn't screw up the parabola geometry by adding the thickness of the mirror glass and end up with a worse setup than aluminum foil
    implying solar power plants don't use massive arrays in a fresnel type arrangement for the sake of manufacturing/setup convenience

  15. This is retarded. on 19-Year-Old Makes Homemade Solar Death Ray · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So he got an existing parabolic dish (satellite receiver) and covered it in reflective material, inexplicably using thousands of tiny pieces of mirror instead of a simple, readily available sheet or coating, used it to burn some stuff for lulz, then left it out somewhere such that it started a fire and burnt itself up. Very pro. This is surely a wonderful, novel demonstration of human ingenuity and cleverness. =/

  16. Re:is something wrong with the posting system? on Has China Already Flown a Space Plane? · · Score: 1

    Yep. =/