clegrand - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Again, just a few winners (Score 1) 192

by clegrand on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @03:20AM (#40839389) Attached to: Internet Billionaire Creates Huge Physics Prize

Well.. let's take a look at that .. if the winner is one of the young guys at 47 and we expect him to live into his 80s .. then we have to cover his life for 40 years. The median available 3 bedroom house in Berkeley right now is $1M. Add up 40 years of property tax (~$775K), house insurance (~$120K), health insurance (~$192K), a new Prius every 10 years (~$120K), car insurance (~$48K), food (~$438K), computers (~$24K), communications (~$48K).. and ...well, you know, a life. $3M barely gets you there.

Submission + - NBC purchases MSNBC rights from Microsoft, rebrands MSNBC.com to NBCNews.com (msn.com)

Submitted by flatt on Sunday July 15, 2012 @10:30PM

flatt writes: Ending a sixteen year partnership between the now Comcast-owned NBCUniversal and Microsoft, the MSNBC.com website has been immediately renamed to NBCNews.com. Both parties note that the integration between both parties is deep and will require 2 years to complete the decoupling. For the immediate future, NBC will continue to provide news content for MSN.com and Microsoft will continue to be the advertising provider for the site. Content control, brand confusion, and partisan content are cited as reasons behind the breakup.

Microsoft sold its 50% share in the MSNBC TV rights to NBC back in 2005.

Submission + - Not a Dwarf: Is Pluto a Binary Planet? (discovery.com)

Submitted by

astroengine

on Sunday July 15, 2012 @03:50PM

astroengine writes: "If the Pluto-Charon system were viewed in a similar way to binary stars and binary asteroids, Pluto would become a Pluto-Charon binary planet. After all, Charon is 12% the mass of Pluto, causing the duo to orbit a barycenter that is located above Pluto's surface. Sadly, in the IAU's haste to define what a planet is in 2006, they missed a golden opportunity to define the planetary binary. Interestingly, if Pluto was a binary planet, last week's discovery of a fifth Plutonian moon would have in fact been the binary's fourth moon to be discovered by Hubble — under the binary definition, Charon wouldn't be classified as a moon at all."

Comment Re:Orbital Factories? (Score 1) 94

by clegrand on Monday June 07, 2010 @09:43PM (#32491416) Attached to: Masten and Armadillo Perform First VTVL Restarts

Kinda missing the original point of the article.. Armadillo & Masten just demonstrated the ability to do away with dropping things into the ocean. Available reaction mass in orbit notwithstanding, just land them back at the newly expanded inter-modal distribution center.

Comment Re:Nuke Engines (Score 1) 252

by clegrand on Sunday May 23, 2010 @01:37AM (#32311750) Attached to: Air Force Sets Date To Fly Mach-6 Scramjet

We need to find a way to fit nuclear powered engines onto planes if we are to make a leap into next chapter of aviation.

That will happen about the same time as Duke Nukem Forever hits the shelves

Comment Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score 1) 46

by clegrand on Saturday December 19, 2009 @01:21PM (#30499342) Attached to: Caltech Scientists Film Photons With Electrons

heh.. that sounds strange, he must lead a charmed life - which is why I lepton it.

Comment Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score 4, Funny) 46

by clegrand on Saturday December 19, 2009 @01:42AM (#30496798) Attached to: Caltech Scientists Film Photons With Electrons

I don't get it.. that kinda humor is not fermi.

Comment Re:usage based (Score 1) 463

by clegrand on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @02:08PM (#28611259) Attached to: The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs

One simple change could be to make progression depend on skill, not trivial success and grinding.

.....

Absolutely non-trivial to implement and balance, so it's probably not the end of the idea. But it might be a start.

The Trouble With Trivials ....ummm.. which end are we starting at?

Comment Re:skill? (Score 1) 463

by clegrand on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @01:58PM (#28611093) Attached to: The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs

I'd have to agree. In the end, general familiarity with a given genre leads to uniform gaming experiences where the only differentiators are the relative coding skills of the programmer responsible for the module your are currently playing. A couple of examples might be: an out of place poly in an FPS can catch your toon or give an unfair advantage; aggro range on mobs in MMORPGs can directly affect the difficulty of an encounter. As skill, or

... intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics ...

increases, you are in effect, playing against the programmer directly. A programmer who is hobbled by the required script.

Comment Re:Most people won't care, but at Orlando... (Score 1) 171

by clegrand on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @11:37AM (#28439707) Attached to: Verified Identity Pass Shuts Down "Clear" Operations

... All of their staff signed up for Clear and said it was either unavailable or pretty much worthless everywhere EXCEPT Orlando...

I am disappointed at the news .. I fly out of San Francisco regularly and it was an incredible convenience. Of course, traveling with family who DIDN'T have the card meant I had to walk thru the normal line with them while I stared longingly at the Clear lane.. heh.

Comment Theatre near OSCON (Score 1) 967

by clegrand on Monday July 21, 2008 @10:40AM (#24273901) Attached to: Batman Discussion

Yup.. a block away from the DoubleTree. (A couple of the guys on my crew producing the event saw it 2 nights ago there) Regal Lloyd Center 10 http://preview.tinyurl.com/5mf2xu

Submission + - Slashdot Users Are 99% Nice (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

clegrand

on Saturday September 01, 2007 @02:45PM

clegrand writes: "As found at BBC Online:

A passionate community was as effective at policing content as a central administrator, said Dr Pouwelse. "I was doing research back in 1999 looking at an obscure website called Slashdot," he said. "It was a technology-related news website controlled by volunteers and it actually worked. A few people would post bad things but 99% of users were nice."
The article is in reference to P2P file sharing and how the European Broadcasting Union is considering Tribler as a means to provide IPTv standardization to the EU. The concept is to treat bandwidth as a "currency" where uploads count as positive value and downloads as negative value. Sooo... if I am the 1% 'bad' (-) slashdotter, does that make my (-) downloads count as (+) positive currency? Free I Love Lucy!"

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