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  1. Re:Landing vs splashdown on Longer Video Shows How Incredibly Close Falcon Stage Came To Successful Landing · · Score: 1

    They have fuel to spare on board anyway (so they can launch with eight of nine engines working)

  2. Re:In space on The Physics of Space Battles · · Score: 1

    There probably is going to be an electromagnetic pulse wave - which contains electromagnetic energy which can be received by the metal parts of the ship/craft. In this case, those metal parts might dissipate some of that energy as noise.
          So no, sounds from another ship won't be heard in space. But outside effects might generate sounds inside your ship.

  3. Re:No it will not. on Would Scottish Independence Mean the End of UK's Nuclear Arsenal? · · Score: 2

    There are quite a few rules for moving to Euro - one of them refers to three (I think) or more years of 1.5% inflation on the national currency... which the Scotland would not have. They'll need to prove they're a solid economy before taking Euro as national currency, and that will take some time.

  4. Re:How does this account of caching? on NVIDIAs 64-bit Tegra K1: The Ghost of Transmeta Rides Again, Out of Order · · Score: 1

    There might be some "hints" for microprocessor for the data to cache - if so, those could be added in the generated microcode at some time before they're really needed, increasing the chance to have them available in cache and/or reducing wait time. Of course, I don't know for sure but you could read a value in a register then zero the register. This might be optimized out of microprocessor run (so it won't consume energy to load and then zero the register), but still go through the data fetch engine, so it would reach L1 or L2 cache.

  5. Re:How does this account of caching? on NVIDIAs 64-bit Tegra K1: The Ghost of Transmeta Rides Again, Out of Order · · Score: 1

    Recovering the slowdown in subsequent steps = use the full width of seven microops to run significantly faster than a typical out-of-order ARM design. As for continuing when there's a data cache miss, I was referring to out-of-order designs, which might - or might not - be stalled in a couple more instructions because of dependencies on not-yet-processed data (which is loaded from memory).

  6. Re:How does this account of caching? on NVIDIAs 64-bit Tegra K1: The Ghost of Transmeta Rides Again, Out of Order · · Score: 1

    If their cache lines are 64 bits, then it's quite possible that successive instructions (based on execution time stamp) are in the same cache line. Remember that this has to improve execution speed most of the time, and not decrease execution speed. As for data caches, I'm not sure - a good prefetcher will help a lot in this.
          This has the possibility to slow down execution speed... I wonder how often and how long the execution of a thread can continue when there's a data cache miss... Maybe almost all of the time it doesn't continue far, and in this case the slowdown could be recovered in subsequent steps.

  7. Re:to save others googling on IBM Creates Custom-Made Brain-Like Chip · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... ... so, parts of the brain are specialized for specific activities.

    Or you use all your brain for any activity you do, and you can't do two things like Napoleon: sit on a horse and look left ?

  8. Re:to save others googling on IBM Creates Custom-Made Brain-Like Chip · · Score: 1

    Specific activities engage only part of a brain - so we probably only have to go go 10% or so. That cuts less than a decade though, so 2040 something

  9. Re:About time on Transatomic Power Receives Seed Funding From Founders Fund Science · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I was thinking of pebble bed reactors, which are big and heavy and so are not fit for shipboard use.
          Liquid salts fueled reactors need "on-site" chemical plant to manage core mixture and remove fission byproducts - not optimal in a warship.

  10. Re:About time on Transatomic Power Receives Seed Funding From Founders Fund Science · · Score: 1

    Also, molten salts reactors are not good on ships and submarines.

  11. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? on European Rosetta Space Craft About To Rendezvous With Comet · · Score: 1

    If you can't send a 10MB image, but because of the restrictions in bandwidth you are limited to a 10kB image, you'll get a grainy, blurry image.

  12. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? on European Rosetta Space Craft About To Rendezvous With Comet · · Score: 1

    No, it only affects available bandwidth - the bytes per second and the bytes per watt (or maybe watts per bit?). Also, until now pictures were taken from astronomical distances and without the help of a huge optical apparatus, which would directly affect the apparent quality of the image.

  13. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? on European Rosetta Space Craft About To Rendezvous With Comet · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are severe limits on sending antenna size and power use on the craft. They use a 2.2 meters diameter dish (seven feet), with 850W electric power from solar panels to transmit from a distance about one hundred thousand times greater than geostationary TV satellites.
          It's like the difference between whispering at someone's ear (half and inch away) and shouting for someone a mile away. I can't think of a car analogy on five orders of magnitude, but I'm sure someone will be more inspired

  14. Re:Why the "incentives"? on SpaceX Chooses Texas Site For Private Spaceport · · Score: 1

    Nokia closed a factory in Germany to move it to Romania, and then closed it in Romania (maybe to move it somewhere else). They're now closing factories in Hungary and Turkey (I think), the one in Germany and Romania after about five years of operations.
          So yes, factories can move. Some of them even before their preferential status expire.

  15. Re:Why the "incentives"? on SpaceX Chooses Texas Site For Private Spaceport · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Over the long term, they hope that the company will pay more than 20 millions back in taxes. And they'll also add local jobs (probably by the hundreds), attract (or supply) highly paid workers, maybe improve tourism in the area and so on.
          They hope that, long term, it will be better for them than if Tesla built the spaceport in a different state.

  16. Re:Resolution and sensor noise on Extracting Audio From Visual Information · · Score: 1

    This seems to work through soundproof glass... On the other hand, how big would be a camera able to record at this resolution and frame rates, and how close it must be?

  17. Re:Possible NASA method on Extracting Audio From Visual Information · · Score: 1

    This is best used at very high frame rates (50,000 frames per second I think) - and the "pictures" of alien planets are made with exposures of hours.

  18. Re:Trust on "ExamSoft" Bar Exam Software Fails Law Grads · · Score: 1

    Those are preparing to be lawyers, not judges or prosecutors.

  19. Re:"Going beyond" hardware on Microsoft's Nokia Plans Come Into Better Focus · · Score: 1

    Solutions matters over hardware/benchmarks if only you have the solutions. Unfortunately, looks like the competition is in a better position regarding solutions (and benchmarks). Even if 512MB of RAM might make Windows Phone itself work better than its competitors (just maybe), add applications written in mind with the 1GB of RAM of mostly anything else on the market and your device will suffer.

  20. Re:still the vision of 9 years ago. on Microsoft's Nokia Plans Come Into Better Focus · · Score: 1

    Vodafone Romania has them in store, so I'd assume they are selling enough of them. If you have specific software that runs on them, it's cheaper to buy new Blackberry phones than to rewrite the software ("traveling" salesmen, on field insurance agents maybe - even though the later seems to be replaced by netbooks). Maybe if security restrictions don't allow yet other phones?

  21. Re:I think the strategy should be obvious on Microsoft's Nokia Plans Come Into Better Focus · · Score: 1

    Nokia historically had fantastic hardware, and in Europe they had huge mindshare. I've been to a Vodafone store, and the young lady in Customer Service (very young) knew about the Nokia 6310 and said many people coming to the store were nostalgic about that model. If the 6310 would have been still selling, I would have bought one without a second thought - in many ways they are better than current smartphones (HUGE effective battery life in standby, on the order of a couple of weeks. Great signal in most circumstances, including "middle of nowhere" places - compared to most of their competitors. Decent preloaded applications. Deterministic and very good performance - my LG Optimus Sol suffers greatly here, sometime it will launch a call at 10+ seconds after clicking on the green phone button, and it always took at least a couple of seconds to disconnect a phone call)
          Remember that at the time, there were no "premium" Windows phones - nothing to compete against the iPhone's milled Aluminum case, or against some or another premium Android devices.

  22. Re:Sigh, that's another waste of time then. on Microsoft's Nokia Plans Come Into Better Focus · · Score: 1

    Microsoft now controls the hardware and OS (like in Surface, the devices part of Nokia they acquired not too long ago). Nokia had both Symbian and a hardware unit. Samsung has Bada (I think it's called), Tizen. Blackberry also had hardware and software. There was also Palm, Inc. Which was also part of HP...

  23. Re:Definition of a successful intercept... on MIT's Ted Postol Presents More Evidence On Iron Dome Failures · · Score: 1

    They wanted to create wild fires - unfortunately, and without the Japanese knowing, it was the wettest summer of the century (or one of the wettest) in USA.

  24. Re:user error on People Who Claim To Worry About Climate Change Don't Cut Energy Use · · Score: 1

    "I do leave my computer on 24/7. However, being I moved to an area that is predominantly powered with clean energy, it's likely my computer use has far less environmental impact than your limited use"

    There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
    There is a single energy market, and to waste it anywhere is to waste it everywhere.

  25. Re: user error on People Who Claim To Worry About Climate Change Don't Cut Energy Use · · Score: 1

    If you're British, you have a larger gallon. And you're driving a smaller diesel engine, as opposed to a larger gasoline engine for Dayze!Confused. And his car is 7 years older, which might also impact fuel efficiency (both by age and by technology level).