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Comment Re:Of course! (Score 3, Interesting) 571

No, I am referring to the NERVA rocket engine, a nuclear reactor that shoots superheated hydrogen out the back. The program was so successful followng the Apollo era that Congress cancelled all funding as it would have made a very expensive Mars trip viable using even 1970's technology (shortens the trip from 6 months to 2 months).
 
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
 
Clearly someone doesn't play Kerbal Space Program. This has nothing to do with RTGs.

Comment Re:Of course! (Score 5, Informative) 571

Nuclear reactors aren't a whole lot larger, they managed to make them small enough to fit on a space rocket, a submarine and back in the 1960's, nine of them on an Aircraft Carrier. It's the support systems (like cooling) and maintenance buildings that end up taking up several acres. Dissipating the waste heat of a 20MW reactor safely, indefinitely, is no small feat.

Comment Re:The future of printing? (Score 1) 178

I use about 10 pages a week from the printer, most of that is me being overly cautious with making sure I have effective notes or references on hand for a meeting. It's faster to sort through three pages of prepared documents than dig through an endless list of emails on my work blackberry.

Comment Re:German illegal? (Score 1) 323

You can buy that on a sign in multiple gift shops in Fredericksburg, Texas, and probably at Friedhelm's on the north end of main street. My cousins call their grandparents Oma and Opa. Texas was predominantly German and Spanish speaking up until the first world war. There were more German speaking Texans than Irish Speaking or Italian speaking New Yorkers. Czech bakeries are A Thing in Texas. Stop off at the Czech-Stop if you're ever headed between Dallas and Austin or San Antonio.

Comment Re:German illegal? (Score 4, Informative) 323

My grandparents are 82 and I only learned last year (at age 30) that they both speak fluent German.They changed the spelling of their last name and learned English due to social pressures. This was in a predominantly German-speaking rural Texas community surrounded by other German-speaking communities*, I can only imagine how badly speaking German was stigmatized in urban academic circles. This is a real thing.
 
*Texas has it's own recognized dialect of German, look it up on Wikipedia

Comment Re:That's easy! (Score 2) 146

The latest Broadwell/Core-M processors are all fanless @ 4.5w.
 
The raspberry pi uses 1.89w for the B model and 1.21 watts for the new/improved B+ model released this summer.
 
By 2017 when the next model is due, Broadwell will be a three year old processor, and Intel's passively cooled Edison will be four years old..

Comment Re:Pay me once, shame on me. (Score 1) 106

Probably someone at Amazon said "what if we just hold a competition and see what happens?" and their boss said "yeah but how much would that cost? we have a budget, you know", response back; "yeah I guess we could put it together for $100,000 including logisitcs, leaving 25% of the project cost as an incentive price". Boss thinks on it for a minute, "hmm yeah that sounds good, send me a proposal and we'll run with it, this is the sort of thing we reinvest all our profits in to, there's no way this is a complete waste of money since this gamble could really improve our bottom line."

Comment Re:Bad publicity. (Score 2) 204

There's an unofficial yahoo email group for our enterprise software owned by a top NYSE-listed company, we get almost no help from their customer service but when you bring up bugs in the email group (which broadcasts to almost all of their customers) they tend to get fixed very quickly by their development staff.

Comment Microsoft Sculpt (Score 1) 304

I own a Model M, with a goofy RJ- to PS2 cable, old school. It's fun and clacky. I also have a Thinkpad which has it's own coveted keypress feel. However in my open office cubefarm plan it's noisy as shit. It also has zero ergonomics. I ended up buying a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, which is sort of a sleek, complete redesign, of the Microsoft Natural keyboard. It has "modern" laptoppy feel keys that are actually quiet, and proper ergonomics. I'm thinking about getting one for the house, I was skeptical about wireless keyboards but I think that this is "the one" for me.

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