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User: RoverDaddy

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  1. Re:MacGuffins, all of 'em (maybe a spoiler here) on Computers and Doctor Who · · Score: 2

    That was really the weakest point of that story and really completely unnecessary. Considering that Doctor Who established that a Weeping Angel is a -stone statue- that can't move at all if anybody is looking at it, it makes no sense at all. First, the Statue of Liberty is not stone, and second, is there actually any point in time where -nobody- at all is looking at it?

  2. Re:Obvious Solution on NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's quite a generality. I've been to my daughter's high school and the teachers there don't appear to be lazy in the least, AND they seem to be leveraging technology in sensible ways. For example, the way my daughter can log in to a school web site and see every day's lessons and homework assignments.

  3. I think I know where this is going.. on The Human Brain Project Kicks Off · · Score: 4, Funny

    "We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.”

  4. Very limited scope on A C++ Library That Brings Legacy Fortran Codes To Supercomputers · · Score: 2
    I took a look at TFA and followed up by reading the description of LibGeoDecomp:

    If your application iteratively updates elements or cells depending only on cells within a fixed neighborhood radius, then LibGeoDecomp may be just the tool you've been looking for to cut down execution times from hours and days to minutes.

    Gee, that seems like an extremely limited problem space, and doesn't measure up at all to the title of this Slashdot submission. It might really be a useful tool, but when I clicked to this article I expected to read about something much more general purpose, in terms of 'bringing Legacy Fortran to Supercomputers'.

    By the way, regarding the use of the word 'codes': I don't think English is the first language of this developer. Cut some slack.

  5. Re:But but but...... on Chris Kraft Talks About The Decline of NASA · · Score: 1

    Lacks nuance.

    The ONLY exception to this, is where the private sector is completely incapable of doing something economically, like super-heavy lift and expensive deep-space vehicles. ... The choice is very simple -- if the private sector can't "cut it" (as is the case with the missions the SLS is meant for), NASA needs the cash to do the work itself.

    Well I guess Elon Musk hasn't gotten the memo yet, that there's no way he can do heavy lift, because he certainly seems hell-bent on trying. Now do I know whether or not designs like the Falcon 9 Heavy or Falcon X Heavy can ever get off the drawing board? No I don't. But I'd love to see Musk try, instead of bowing to 'prevailing wisdom' that only the government can do this.

  6. We don't know who struck first, us or them... on Wireless Devices Go Battery-Free With New Communication Technique · · Score: 1

    ... But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.

    So much for that bright idea.

  7. Re:The reasons have disappeard. on Former WaPo Staffer Rob Pegoraro Talks About Newspapers' Decline (Video) · · Score: 1

    But not local news..

    Well patch.com is trying. I can't say they're yet but at least you get some local news out of their sites.

  8. Re:The reasons have disappeard. on Former WaPo Staffer Rob Pegoraro Talks About Newspapers' Decline (Video) · · Score: 1

    In my area I think retailers realize there are too many consumers who don't get a newspaper, so a bundle of advertising is bulk-mailed every Thursday for free. It provides flyers for most of the area supermarkets, a few hardware and department store flyers, and occasionally some coupons. And a lot of it is still printed on newsprint. We also get the advertising envelope bundles like Valpak and the like.

    By the way, I don't think newspapers are even a particularly cheap source of paper, considering how thin many local newspapers have become. You can get a better deal buying a ream of paper at an office supply store, but I admit it won't burn as well or protect your packages like crumpled newsprint.

  9. Re:LinkedIn uses Node on Ask Slashdot: Node.js vs. JEE/C/C++/.NET In the Enterprise? · · Score: 1

    A package may not be compatible with the latest release, but there is no way to tell without installing it to try it out.

    This is the first thing I ran into as a newcomer to Node. Not just packages but programming techniques. You're trying to learn how to do something trivial for the first time, so you hit Google and then drop into Stack Overflow and find plenty of questions and answers about your very problem. Then you try to use the solution and it falls apart. That's when you look back through the comments and you discover, "Oh yeah, I wrote that answer / released that package for Node 0.4.x: it really doesn't work anymore, sorry."

    This isn't really an indictment of node, because I see this now wherever I look into the Web world (coming from the C/C++ world). So much immaturity (in the literal sense). Everything: HTML, CSS, Standards, Real-world browser support for said standards, VMs, best practices for JavaScript, tools like Dojo, Node, etc. all in flux. Documents that describe the "deprecated" old way, the new "approved" way, and the "better" way that doesn't work yet but will when the next revision is coming out (date TBD). A little more stability would go a long way.

  10. Re:Hopefully it means more Sierra Adventure Games. on Kick-started Remake of Leisure Suit Larry Now On Sale · · Score: 1

    Well the people who created Space Quest don't own the IP to Roger Wilco now, but they had this Kickstarter last year which achieved its funding:

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-spaceventure-by-the-creators-of-space-que

  11. Re:What now? on Supreme Court Overturns Defense of Marriage Act · · Score: 1

    Actually the court decision still allows one state to refuse to recognize the same-sex marriages performed in another state. The decision only ruled against the portion of the law allowing the Federal Government to not grant rights and benefits to same-sex partners legally married in their home state.

    So, basically the overall effect of the decision is: Legality of same-sex marriage is still each state's right to decide, but the Federal Government must abide by the rules of each state which ever way it goes.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act

  12. Re:What now? on Supreme Court Overturns Defense of Marriage Act · · Score: 1

    The Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that state laws against mixed-race marriage are unconstitutional. That decision immediately nullified all such laws (even if the states didn't take them off the books, as in Alabama which didn't repeal the ban until 2001, it doesn't matter).

    Someone might say, 'well I don't see anything in the Constitution that guarantees the right to mixed-race marriage', but that opinion, or even that of Congress or the President, is not what matters. The role of the Supreme Court was established in the early 1800's as the final arbiter of what the words in the Constitution actually mean.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_review_in_the_United_States

  13. Re:there are other scale up isses that computer po on Author Peter Wayner Talks About Autonomous Cars (Video) · · Score: 1

    Some of this discussion seems to be assuming that autonomous cars will -have- to talk to one another? Why? The Google prototype car doesn't talk to the ordinary human-operated cars on the road. It just deals with them with its sensors. As far as I can tell the Google car is designed to safely take itself wherever a human driver could take it.

    So what are the 'network' and 'compatibility' issues?

  14. Re:Finally a use for the ISS on Asteroid Passes (Just) 65,000 Miles From Earth · · Score: 1

    You forgot Hyperspace. I'm sure the ISS astronauts want that one too.

  15. Re:So what? on China's Allwinner Outsold Intel, Qualcomm In Tablet Processors In 2012 · · Score: 2

    You're thinking of Surface RT. Surface PRO requires an x86 compatible processor, namely an Intel Core i5: http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-8-pro/specifications

  16. Re:Simulation of what? on LLNL/RPI Supercomputer Smashes Simulation Speed Record · · Score: 1

    Third base.

  17. Re:It is not that simple! on Cliff Bleszinski: Vote With Your Dollars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My problem with microtransactions is that the economics of the model seems to drive them to be geared toward the 'whales', as in people gullible enough to sink hundreds to thousands of dollars playing a trivial mobile game. Say there's a free-to-play game I download and find I like. I might want to reward the developer by paying 5 or 10 dollars for it (a kind of price that seems reasonable for a mobile game). But if I look through the microtransaction store, I invariably find that 5 to 10 dollars buys exactly -squat- worth of benefit in the game. It looks so greedy and makes me feel like I'd be a total rube to even give them a dollar. But there is no 'reasonable' option in the store because it's aiming for people who will actually pay $20 or more for a meaningless virtual trinket. Sorry that's just not going to be me.

  18. Re:A bit of the old and new but NAND? on Ultrasound Waves Used To Increase Data Storage Capacity of Magnetic Media · · Score: 2

    Maybe that part is related to a recent article indicating that heat could be used to restore broken NAND flash cells back to working order:

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/12/02/2222235/self-healing-nand-flash-memory-that-can-survive-over-100-million-cycles

    Perhaps ultrasound is a way to deliver that heat.

  19. This is how you prevent laziness: on Astronauts Could Get Lazier As Mars Mission Progresses · · Score: 5, Funny
  20. Re:Advertised price 9.96 = 10.00 on Canada To Stop Producing Pennies In 2013 · · Score: 1

    Unless you operate a store where people can only buy one item at a time, I'd say this is impossible.

  21. Re:Excellent; on Canada To Stop Producing Pennies In 2013 · · Score: 1

    That really is a DERP because "In God We Trust" is on the edge of the Presidential dollar coins and on the face of the Sacagawea dollar coins.

  22. Re:Legendary TV Shows But Not In USA? on Gerry Anderson, Co-Creator of Thunderbirds, Dies · · Score: 1

    Lighten up. If you can deal with the fact that the Hulk's shirt always falls off when he transforms, but his -pants- magically manage to stay intact just enough, then you can deal with the clothing 'devolving'. If you pay attention, SF has problems with clothes responding to things that are supposed to affect living beings -all the time-. It happens in Star Trek. It happens everywhere. It's a necessary conceit. In this case it was -particularly- necessary to the plot, because otherwise the non-devolved crew members would have realized who the devolved people were immediately, killing the whole story.

  23. Re:It's not true 3D on Has 3D Film-Making Had Its Day? · · Score: 2
  24. Re:Why is this legal? on High-Frequency Traders Use 50-Year-Old Wireless Tech · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't think I understand you. Are you saying we should legalize fraud and bank robbery?

    I think hoboroadie is saying that we have -already- made fraud and bank robbery legal by the way we allow the system to work (e.g. high-frequency trading and it's associated stock manipulation being allowed - my example, not hobo's)

  25. Re:Ahead of schedule capture on ISS Robotic Arm Captures Dragon Capsule · · Score: 1

    Dark Star.