Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Why have that in colleges at all? (Score 2) 177

by Yhippa (#34660568) Attached to: Will Patents Make NCAA Football Playoffs Impossible?
The longer I'm alive the less this makes sense to me. With all the publicity around players selling their awards (Ohio State Buckeyes) and agents getting involved with players in college (Reggie Bush) for day-to-day money think the goals of the athletes in college basketball and football are at odds with the rest of the campus.

So why don't we stop pretending that the athletes in those sports are there to get a degree in liberal arts or engineering? They should start a secondary pre-professional league where these kids can go test the waters, get good training, and provide higher-quality sports entertainment. They could be traded and not get busted for trying to make subsistence money. If they find out it's not for them then they can always choose to go back and enter college if it's right for them.

Comment Re:Sounds problematic (Score 1) 321

by Yhippa (#34317606) Attached to: FCC To Allow Texting To 911
I was thinking about possible solutions to this like if you receive a cluster of messages temporally or geospatially then you can further investigate it. But text messages are so cheap that a bunch of people could coordinate a prank on 911 easily. After reading the article I think that this will probably be a good thing in the long run and that allowing texts (tweets?) to 911 is a valuable public service and they're going to have to make it work out somehow.

Comment Re:This is painfully obvious. (Score 1) 772

by Yhippa (#33501934) Attached to: Researchers Say Happiness Costs $75K

>I personally make around $35k as a young single person with no debt, and feel rich, fwiw. I can't even spend it all--- after $1k/month on rent for a nice apt near the beach, and another $1k on food/car/entertainment, my expenses are pretty much covered.

My math must be off because $1,000 for rent plus $1,000 with other expenses is at least $48,000 per year in expenses not including taxes. Unless you had money saved up before you started making $35,000 to make up the difference.

Comment Re:It could also be said (Score 1) 514

by Yhippa (#31911176) Attached to: History Repeats Itself — Mac & the iPad
Perhaps he is also in the right place at the right time. We've seen technologies happen well ahead of their time (Apple Netwon, Divx rentals) that conceptually were good but just didn't have the cheap tech to make it affordable. Or people just didn't understand it but we wouldn't think twice about it now.

Don't get me wrong I think Steve is probably a really strong leader based on what I've read. I wonder if he could have revolutionized any other consumer tech based on his willingness to not worry about quarterly earnings and to be blunt and honest with people about his vision.

Comment Re:It's not spin, it's Obama's personal priorities (Score 2, Interesting) 450

by Yhippa (#30949150) Attached to: Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches
Did you read TFA?

Mr. Obama’s proposal would further dismantle what remains of the human spaceflight initiative started by the Bush administration in 2004. Last year, $3.5 billion in spending was cut from President George W. Bush’s NASA budget projection for 2011 through 2013, money that would have been used to develop the lander that was to return astronauts to the moon by 2020.
The proposed budget increase would also be much less than the $3-billion-a-year increase that a blue-ribbon committee appointed by the Obama administration said was needed for NASA to successfully pursue a human spaceflight program beyond low-Earth orbit.

Doesn't sound like Bush II was quite so friendly to the space program, eh?

I honestly think that it's worth a shot to try and take the space program to the free market. It doesn't always work out but I feel it has the best shot of reducing costs and potentially accelerating space development by transferring it from a government monopoly to competitive entities.

Comment Re:3G Data Plans (Score 1) 1713

by Yhippa (#30923700) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open
This makes me iSad because I already pay about $60/mo. for FiOS internet. $29.99 is a great deal but that's just too much money on top of what I'm paying. And what's up with the 250 MB for $15? Who would really use that? The average user would probably use that up in two days.

Comment Re:What is the point? (Score 1) 1713

by Yhippa (#30923556) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open
To be fair, Apple probably made the decision to get the base product in the hands of customers. You can choose to buy it or not. Nobody is putting a gun up to your head or anything. I have a Palm Pre and it seems like it gets additional useful features every few months that go by. I'm OK with that. I liked the base functionality enough where I was willing to sacrifice having a video player and an app store right now. Iterative releases aren't always bad. I'm okay with delayed inclusion of features as long as the overall package makes my life better.
Space

Submission + - Obama advised against further Moon missions (npr.org)

Submitted by Yhippa
Yhippa writes: A panel of advisors has warned Obama for funding more NASA-based Moon missions. Alternatives are proposed such as exploring near-Earth objects and making good use of our existing space labs.

Comment Re:I like it. (Score 1) 219

by Yhippa (#29174757) Attached to: Nokia Unveils Its First Netbook
I agree. I've been reading more about the Ovi service provided by Nokia and I'm liking it more and more. It looks to have a lot of the stuff I use my laptop for anyway but from a dashboard view. If they can put this in a cheap netbook so that I don't have to buy one of their phones on another service that would be even better.

Slashdot Top Deals

DEC diagnostics would run on a dead whale. -- Mel Ferentz

Close