Comment Good morning! (Score 4, Funny) 336
Its a wonderful day in the neighborhood....
Comment Re:A better idea that a space elevator (Score 1) 356
In addition, the estimated costs have got to be a factor of 10 too optimistic. 60 billion dollars? For something constructed of tens of thousands of miles of superconducting cable and a structure made to aerospace engineering tolerances that is 1000 miles long? Even 600 billion sounds optimistic for something that large.
Not to mention that the idea is that the entire tube holds a vacuum, which buoys it up, and it's held DOWN with tethers. How do you even construct that? There are no cranes to LEO. Even if you put them in place, and empty out the gas slowly so that it rises (without coming to a sudden stop at the end that breaks a tether), each segment is probably hundreds of pounds of metal. Imagine being miles in the air, wrestling with an enormous hunk of metal that's tied to the earth in what you can only hope is the right position, in order to get the end to line up with the last piece...
Well, okay, it sounds like a heck of an exciting job. But it also sounds like it could go wrong so terribly easily...
I don't think you quite understood this. the tube is not elevated because of the vac. Its elevated by magnetic levitation. the vac is to avoid all the problems associated with going 25,000mph inside a tube filled with air.
Comment Supply and Demand (Score 1) 377
What happens to my heating bill when everyone suddenly decides to use CNG for transportation? Do we have anything near the kind of production to maintain the current low cost of CNG, or would we suddenly see CNG going for comparable prices to gasoline?
Submission + - JotForm domain shut down by US Secret Service (thenextweb.com)
lomedhi writes: Probably in response to phishers using JotForm's free form service, the Secret Service has seized jotform.com, denying access to 2 million forms created by 700,000 users. The Secret Service is unresponsive. Who needs SOPA?
The service is now available at alternate domains jotform.net and jotformpro.com, but changing URLs is a serious inconvenience to some. Many are paid corporate clients. Among other things, iPad and iPhone apps that embed forms will have to be re-approved by Apple.
The service is now available at alternate domains jotform.net and jotformpro.com, but changing URLs is a serious inconvenience to some. Many are paid corporate clients. Among other things, iPad and iPhone apps that embed forms will have to be re-approved by Apple.
Comment Re:Dying from lack of surprise... (Score 1) 765
So, let me see if I understand this. The American people should grovel at the feet of their government...begging for liberties like scraps from a dinner table. Those who express dissatisfaction with that arrangement should be "discouraged" from such expressions....as they are dangerous.
Comment Why? (Score 1) 209
Whats with the draconian data policies cropping up everywhere now? Even the company I work for is requiring HD destruction as opposed to just a decent low level formatting.
Is there at least a good reason in this case?
Comment Re:This is good. (Score 1) 490
Placing them near the ocean would be an effective way to facilitate a move to hydrogen for portable power. I've always thought we should do this. Nuclear and Hydrogen......the future.
Submission + - Proposed AC Ban (washingtonpost.com)
shemyazaz writes: Liberal writer Stan Cox describes why he thinks AC should be banned for all but "necessary exceptions".
Comment WTF (Score 1) 163
Ok, I can understand having muddy rules where the operation of a botnet is concerned, but what I do not understand is how they can get away with launching that DDOS attack. Shouldn't that be like large scale vandalism or something? Hard to imagine them getting away scott free.
Funeral Being Held Today For IE6
194
An anonymous reader writes "More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend. The deceased? Internet Explorer 6. The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek 'funeral' hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado."
Game Distribution Platforms Becoming Annoyingly Common 349
The Escapist's Shamus Young recently posted an article complaining about the proliferation of distribution platforms and social networks for video games. None of the companies who make these are "quite sure how games will be sold and played ten years from now," he writes, "but they all know they want to be the ones running the community or selling the titles." Young continues,
"Remember how these systems usually work: The program sets itself up to run when Windows starts, and it must be running if you want to play the game. If you follow this scheme to its logical conclusion, you'll see that the system tray of every gaming PC would eventually end up clogged with loaders, patchers, helpers, and monitors. Every publisher would have a program for serving up content, connecting players, managing digital licenses, performing patches, and (most importantly) selling stuff. Some people don't mind having 'just one more' program running in the background. But what happens when you have programs from Valve, Stardock, Activision, 2k Games, Take-Two, Codemasters, Microsoft, Eidos, and Ubisoft? Sure, you could disable them. But then when you fire the thing up to play a game, it will want to spend fifteen minutes patching itself and the game before it will let you in. And imagine how fun it would be juggling accounts for all of them."
Comment Re:Single Best Fix: Introducing Discrete Mathemati (Score 1) 677
I think the use of discrete mathematics needs to be spread throughout the entire curriculum
Sorry, said discrete when I meant applied.
Comment Re:Single Best Fix: Introducing Discrete Mathemati (Score 1) 677
I am in agreement with the above. However, I think the use of discrete mathematics needs to be spread throughout the entire curriculum. Expecting kids to progress intellectually just because you force feed them formulas is a bit on the ridiculous side.I was one of those who never managed to "get" mathematics in school. Mostly because of the teaching methods utilizing rote memorization. My conceptual learning style just didn't allow me to absorb the information without proper applications. It took a very dedicated college professor to show me how easy mathematics can actually be when you know exactly what you are trying to do, and why.
I think that the proper implimentation of conceptual teaching methods would solve at least some if not most of our math problems in primary and secondary education.
The author's idea that math be treated as an optional subject kinda bothers me. Yes you can treat it as a form of art, and it helps if you don't stifle the creative tendencies of those few who are already interested in math, but a general understanding of math is a necessary component for understanding many other things in this world.
