Although I think he actually did go to business school. (He has a BS in economics.) I always figured his success was because he was both a talented engineer and a good businessman. Apparently he thinks a pure business background is a bad idea, though.

Apparently it cost SpaceX around $300 million to develop the Falcon 9 rocket. That is one expensive controller.

Is it just me, or is "watt-hours per year" an unnecessarily complicated unit of measurement? I know it's commonplace, but there are just too many time units going back and forth. A watt is a joule per second, so a watt-hour per year is a (joule per second)-hour per year.

A watt-hour is 3600 joules, and 1400 terawatt-hours per year (aka 1.4 petawatt-hours per year) comes out to be just under 160 billion joules per second, aka 160 gigawatts. It seems like the unit (gigawatts) is already there, so why invent a new one? (Seems a bit like a case of Imperial vs metric units, but in this case they're both metric. The only conversion factor is different units of time.)

Ah, thank you! That actually makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors so much in the first place?

It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.

I understand that LibreOffice has compatibility issues with MS Office formats, and this can make LibreOffice a poor choice in many professional environments. However:

If, by your own admission, MS Office has trouble being compatible with itself, should LibreOffice really be blamed for running into problems here?

This is our goddamn country, and we need to stand up for ourselves. Forget party lines -- if someone supports this sort of tyrannical measure, don't vote for 'em. Period.

If we just sit and complain, they'll ignore us. If we fire half of congress, they'll pay attention. I say the latter option's at least worth a try.

We should abolish the IRS entirely. Just kill the dang thing.

(Sorry if that sounds like a shameless political plug, but I'm starting to think that's what really needs to happen.)

I'm using Links in a terminal right now. Not something I usually do. It's rather disorienting...

We bronies are clever! We wait until they're distracted, and then... we strike! Mwahahaha!

(\ Brohoof!

It's been a couple years since we last had something on Slashdot, so I'm glad to see this up here.

I just read about the 4 inch flight, and for some reason I found it hilarious. It sounds like something out of Kerbal Space Program.

When the internet is outlawed, only outlaws will have the internet.

Yes, a free internet can be dangerous in the wrong hands -- but of all people, a gun rights advocate should understand why that's not grounds for banning/controlling/censoring it.