It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems, like alternative energy
Yeah, 'cause an agency that sends electrically powered devices millions of miles from the nearest electrical grid has probably never done any research on alternative energy. They just use really, really long extension cords.
It pains me that so many people drive cars larger than they really need, but consider this: A few mpg increase for a truck has much more impact than the same mpg increase in an already fuel-efficient vehicle.
For example, let's say a truck gets 20 mpg. After doing simple things like checking the tire air pressure, driving conservatively (slowly), etc, it might get 25 mpg -- that's a 25% increase.
But if you start with a car that already gets 50 mpg and you increase it to 55 mpg, that's only a 10% increase in efficiency.
You're just playing a math game by showing percentage improvement rather than absolute improvement. It's like saying a $1000 raise is a higher percentage of the income of a poor person than a rich person; so if your getting a raise, it's better to be poor.
If both vehicles drive the same number of miles per week, then a 5 mpg improvement will save them both the same amount of gasoline, the same amount of money and the same amount of carbon emissions. In every way that could possibly matter, the savings are the same.
You? nothing. Which is precisely why it's so significant. This is private enterprise, vs. a mandatory government space program. You get to choose whether to be a part of this, or not.
Do I get to choose whether or not I'm part of the $700,000,000,000 Wall Street bailout? That was private enterprise too.
You have to consider Asian, and especially East Asian thinking. They aren't like the west with its "profit immediately or forget about it" thinking.
Riiiiight. Because putting melamine in milk powder and antifreeze in toothpaste isn't about immediate profits, it's a long-term strategy for building a trusted brand.
The FBI believes Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the Oklahoma Federal Building, and has many links connecting Terry Nichols to Al Queda.
The FBI believes no such thing. It was Timothy McVeigh's own defense lawyer, not the prosecution or FBI, who tried (unsuccessfully) to link Nichols to Bin Laden (and the neo-nazis, and the KKK) during his trial in a desperate attempt to minimize McVeigh's involvement paint him to be a bit-player in a much larger conspiracy.
You seem to have forgotten that Bin Laden's attacks on... Oklahoma Federal Building (suspected but not proven)
Only right-wing conspiracy historical-revisionist nut-jobs believe that Bin Laden had anything to do with the OK city bombing, in an attempt to both discredit the Clinton administration and blame anything bad the ever happened in America on Bin Laden (as if 9-11 wasn't enough).
There really should be a moderation tag for "most people aren't nearly as funny, or as obvious as they think they are".
Funny is admittedly somewhat subjective, but any Slashdot reader interested enough in Mars exploration to read this article would no doubt be familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter and the error involving conversion of metric units that caused its failure; so I would call the joke fairly obvious.
How, exactly, does a global pandemic affect a network? Why would they need network management tools in case of such an event?
The biggest effect would probably be the massive number of people who suddenly want to telecommute; either because they've been quarantined or because they want to stay at home and minimize the chances of coming into contact with someone who's sick.
How is "Yes we can!" so much worse than "I won't raise your taxes"?
It really depends on the context. "Yes we can!" sounds like a correct usage of the first person plural, however, people who consistently speak of themselves in the first person plural (i.e. the royal "we" as in "We are not amused") come off sounding rather pompous. People who consistently speak of themselves in the third person (as in "Bob Dole won't raise your taxes"), just come off sounding crazy.
Those sensors are not very precise and I'm not sure it could do much between differentiation of vehicles.
Anyone who has ever sat at a traffic light for several minutes in a motorcycle waiting for the light to change when there's no traffic in the other direction will attest to the fact that saying those sensors are "not very precise" is an understatement. I doubt if they could detect the difference between Hummer and and Mini.
Similar to Russian spacecraft, the Shenzhou has a separate re-entry module and orbital module (whereas Apollo for example, had a command module which functioned as the both the orbital module and re-entry vehicle). The orbital module is what stays in orbit to become a piece of the space station.
Why havent tablets caught on?... Most of the "tablets" out there are just laptops with flippable screens == too much complexity and too many fragile moving parts.
Moving parts yes, but fragile? What's fragile is a tablet screen without a flippable laptop keyboard protecting it during transport/storage/etc. Don't think of it as a laptop with a flippable touchscreen; think of it as a tablet PC with a built-in protective cover that doubles as a keyboard.
If I had mod points I'd counteract the idiot who modded you offtopic, so you'll have to settle for an "I agree" comment. Creative Commons license (or Public Domain) is not the same as Open Source. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source#Proliferation_of_the_term)
Two "lily whites", as the terrorists called them, with no training successfully build and detonate a large complex bomb and get caught immediately?... How was it 2 rednecks did what professional terrorists did in 93 all on their own?
Rednecks with US Army training. And the 'large complex bomb' was a Ryder truck full of nitrogen fertilizer doused in diesel fuel. The instructions for making such a bomb have been on the internet for 20 years and circulating among American militia groups for far longer than that. And why would Islamic terrorists need "lily white" stooges for this attack when they didn't bother for the 93 WTC attack or even for 9-11? I suppose next you are going to try to tell me that Iraqi terrorists were behind the JFK assassination?
Iraq was at the top of the State Sponsored Terrorism list for 20+ years. They were tied to the '93 WTC attack, the '95 OKC attack, and the '98 Embassy bombing.
Whoever modded you insightful didn't read closely enough. Are you seriously claiming Iraq had any involvement of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? Even the Bush administration isn't that dumb. That attack (the largest terrorist attack in the US pre-911) was domestic terrorism by right-wing nut-job Timothy McVeigh. His confession stated his reason was a retaliation against the US government for Waco and Ruby Ridge. His only 'tie' to Iraq was that he was a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, where he made his first kill (I wonder how many new 'Timothy McVeigh's will come back from the current war there).
Reptiles actually have great immune systems. Crocodiles are frequently injured in territorial fights, yet their open wounds do not get infected in the less-than-antiseptic environments they live in. Scientist are currently studying them to try to figure out why their immune systems work so much better than ours. Then again, they are one of the few families of reptiles that survived the extinction, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Reader dlaudel writes, regarding the previously-mentioned Google EULA for Chrome, "According to Ars Technica, Google's EULA for Chrome was just copy-and-pasted from its EULA for other services, a practice that is apparently common at Google."
The practice is common at Apple as well. They recently got caught copying the EULA from the Mac version of Safari to Windows version. The problem? The EULA says you can only use it on Mac hardware!
If companies don't even read their own EULAs, how can they expect the users to read them?
Take an old vinyl record. Punch a new hole just off-centre. Play the record. Sometimes it's too high pitched (fast) and sometimes it's too low pitched (slow). Yet the song still takes the same length of time to play.
You're assuming that the eccentricity of the earth's orbit is the only source of error. Over the time spans we use carbon dating for, the earth's orbit may have shifted or worse yet, the sun's output may have increased or decreased (in ways that are not periodic and thus difficult to compensate for).
On the same subject, our economy is really based on illusion/delusions at the core of it. Money itself is inteself of non-intrisnic value. Well, to be fair... Even gold isn't really useful at the basic levels by itself. (Warren Buffet once joked why do value something that just gets dug up from a hole only to be buried in another somewhere in a bank.)
I agree on the money but not the gold. Due to it's unique properties (malleability, ductility, conductivity, etc) gold has utility value, in other words you can use it for things (it's also shiny and pretty). Additionally, it's relatively rare, which increases it's value. Money on the other hand is nether useful nor rare (the government can print as much as it wants). Or, more accurately: the utility and scarcity of money is artificially controlled whereas the utility and scarcity of gold are intrinsic (until someone invents a replicator).
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Yeah, 'cause an agency that sends electrically powered devices millions of miles from the nearest electrical grid has probably never done any research on alternative energy. They just use really, really long extension cords.
You're just playing a math game by showing percentage improvement rather than absolute improvement. It's like saying a $1000 raise is a higher percentage of the income of a poor person than a rich person; so if your getting a raise, it's better to be poor.
If both vehicles drive the same number of miles per week, then a 5 mpg improvement will save them both the same amount of gasoline, the same amount of money and the same amount of carbon emissions. In every way that could possibly matter, the savings are the same.
Toxic Fumes from Mac pros? I know the hygiene of professional Mac users is not always daisy fresh, but calling them toxic is a tad insensitive.
Do I get to choose whether or not I'm part of the $700,000,000,000 Wall Street bailout? That was private enterprise too.
Riiiiight. Because putting melamine in milk powder and antifreeze in toothpaste isn't about immediate profits, it's a long-term strategy for building a trusted brand.
The FBI believes no such thing. It was Timothy McVeigh's own defense lawyer, not the prosecution or FBI, who tried (unsuccessfully) to link Nichols to Bin Laden (and the neo-nazis, and the KKK) during his trial in a desperate attempt to minimize McVeigh's involvement paint him to be a bit-player in a much larger conspiracy.
Only right-wing conspiracy historical-revisionist nut-jobs believe that Bin Laden had anything to do with the OK city bombing, in an attempt to both discredit the Clinton administration and blame anything bad the ever happened in America on Bin Laden (as if 9-11 wasn't enough).
Funny is admittedly somewhat subjective, but any Slashdot reader interested enough in Mars exploration to read this article would no doubt be familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter and the error involving conversion of metric units that caused its failure; so I would call the joke fairly obvious.
The biggest effect would probably be the massive number of people who suddenly want to telecommute; either because they've been quarantined or because they want to stay at home and minimize the chances of coming into contact with someone who's sick.
It really depends on the context. "Yes we can!" sounds like a correct usage of the first person plural, however, people who consistently speak of themselves in the first person plural (i.e. the royal "we" as in "We are not amused") come off sounding rather pompous. People who consistently speak of themselves in the third person (as in "Bob Dole won't raise your taxes"), just come off sounding crazy.
Anyone who has ever sat at a traffic light for several minutes in a motorcycle waiting for the light to change when there's no traffic in the other direction will attest to the fact that saying those sensors are "not very precise" is an understatement. I doubt if they could detect the difference between Hummer and and Mini.
Similar to Russian spacecraft, the Shenzhou has a separate re-entry module and orbital module (whereas Apollo for example, had a command module which functioned as the both the orbital module and re-entry vehicle). The orbital module is what stays in orbit to become a piece of the space station.
A difference that is increasingly lost on juries (remember the O.J. trial).
Moving parts yes, but fragile? What's fragile is a tablet screen without a flippable laptop keyboard protecting it during transport/storage/etc. Don't think of it as a laptop with a flippable touchscreen; think of it as a tablet PC with a built-in protective cover that doubles as a keyboard.
If I had mod points I'd counteract the idiot who modded you offtopic, so you'll have to settle for an "I agree" comment. Creative Commons license (or Public Domain) is not the same as Open Source. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source#Proliferation_of_the_term)
Rednecks with US Army training. And the 'large complex bomb' was a Ryder truck full of nitrogen fertilizer doused in diesel fuel. The instructions for making such a bomb have been on the internet for 20 years and circulating among American militia groups for far longer than that. And why would Islamic terrorists need "lily white" stooges for this attack when they didn't bother for the 93 WTC attack or even for 9-11? I suppose next you are going to try to tell me that Iraqi terrorists were behind the JFK assassination?
Whoever modded you insightful didn't read closely enough. Are you seriously claiming Iraq had any involvement of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? Even the Bush administration isn't that dumb. That attack (the largest terrorist attack in the US pre-911) was domestic terrorism by right-wing nut-job Timothy McVeigh. His confession stated his reason was a retaliation against the US government for Waco and Ruby Ridge. His only 'tie' to Iraq was that he was a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, where he made his first kill (I wonder how many new 'Timothy McVeigh's will come back from the current war there).
The list was a compilation of hacking firsts. Bolton didn't make the list since he got his idea from Richard Pryor in Superman III.
I thought their job was to prevent American children from seeing Janet Jackson's nipple? Why are they doing all this technical engineering stuff?
Reptiles actually have great immune systems. Crocodiles are frequently injured in territorial fights, yet their open wounds do not get infected in the less-than-antiseptic environments they live in. Scientist are currently studying them to try to figure out why their immune systems work so much better than ours. Then again, they are one of the few families of reptiles that survived the extinction, so maybe that had something to do with it.
The practice is common at Apple as well. They recently got caught copying the EULA from the Mac version of Safari to Windows version. The problem? The EULA says you can only use it on Mac hardware!
If companies don't even read their own EULAs, how can they expect the users to read them?
You're assuming that the eccentricity of the earth's orbit is the only source of error. Over the time spans we use carbon dating for, the earth's orbit may have shifted or worse yet, the sun's output may have increased or decreased (in ways that are not periodic and thus difficult to compensate for).
Is blind faith in global warming scare mongering number one?
I agree on the money but not the gold. Due to it's unique properties (malleability, ductility, conductivity, etc) gold has utility value, in other words you can use it for things (it's also shiny and pretty). Additionally, it's relatively rare, which increases it's value. Money on the other hand is nether useful nor rare (the government can print as much as it wants). Or, more accurately: the utility and scarcity of money is artificially controlled whereas the utility and scarcity of gold are intrinsic (until someone invents a replicator).
Better yet, we use the data for a new CAPTCHA system. "To enter this website, please type the name of the fruit or vegetable in the following photo."