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Comment Re:hard to hate this guy... (Score 4, Informative) 24

I can recommend the movie. There isn't a ton of footage of exotic sea life, but it's a good story about the process that ultimately brought him to the point in his life where he's diving the Mariana Trench (it talks about The Abyss, his Titanic dives, and also a dive to the Bismarck that I didn't realize he did). The footage of the actual dives is pretty amazing too, he didn't mention it in the interview but they had a separate unmanned "lander" camera platform, and the end result was that they had exterior footage of his sub descending, on the bottom, and ascending. I kept wondering how they were getting those shots until he introduced the lander. He seems genuinely excited to be an explorer rather than strictly a film director, and I think a lot of people around here could relate to his wonder about the unknown and science in general. It was a good hour and half.

And, since my friend and I only had 4 other people in the theater keeping us company, it was very roomy.

Comment Re:Would YOU be able to sleep in space?? (Score 4, Interesting) 106

Seriously, someone contact these authors:

Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say.

Causes range from slipping the surly bonds of earth, to floating weightless around a space station, to being able to look out a window and see the place where nearly every recorded event in human history has happened from a vantage that you would never otherwise get. Everything from showering to eating to pooping to masturbating is new again!

I would probably have to spend at least a month on the space station before the idea of closing my eyes for an extended period sounded like a good use of my time.

Comment Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score 4, Interesting) 275

It still might have an edge against fighters, at least for the time being. It sounds like the dual radar systems are being installed on larger surface vehicles, but there could always be a smaller version for fighters on the way. Of course, if the fighters are able to receive targeting data from the ships then it wouldn't matter (as long as that targeting data isn't being jammed).

Comment Re:And T-mobiles software is terrible... (Score 1) 127

How can you even tell? When I go to view the power usage details it says "Android System" at about 90%, with all of the games and apps I've installed taking up the remaining 10%. I'd love to tell how much power the bluetooth uses, for example, but it's apparently included in "Android System". The native internet browser is also included there. In fact, pretty much anything I'd like to actually test is included in the big bundle.

Comment Re:High speed car chase on "Cops" (Score 1) 140

They obviously don't care about abiding by the basic rules of society so why should the taxpayers have to pay to keep them around?

Yeah, capital punishment for car theft, that's a fantastic idea. How about drunk drivers, they don't care about following society's rules either, right? Might as well kill them for a first offense. Take care of that problem. Jaywalkers should probably be shot and killed also. And if someone lets their grass grow too long and violates a city ordinance, well, might as well take them out too. The same goes for anyone convicted of a speeding offense, if they can't follow the rules then we should just go ahead and kill them.

Comment Re:depends on what you're doing (Score 1) 402

The entire program is Windows-only (hence my reply to a guy saying that his text editor strategy breaks down on Windows). The ConTEXT project was ultimately sold because the developer was moving to a Linux environment, actually. The community raised over $10k to buy it from him, we got outbid by a d-bag who swooped in at the last minute (easy to do when our donation total was public), he proceeded to do exactly jack shit with the program, and we gave the money to the developer anyway. It's a fast, lightweight text editor for Windows though, with a decent compare tool. It's my tool of choice when I need to open text files that are very large. Note that version 0.98.6 was not released by the new owner, just re-branded. Every downloadable version of ConTEXT was created by Eden Kirin, regardless of what the About menu says.

Comment Re:Boo (Score 1) 163

I drove from Baltimore to DC and back with a rear tire flat the whole time (a Goodyear Assurance TripleTred, something actually useful), and then put air in it when I noticed it was flat.

You can drive from Baltimore to DC and back without noticing that you have a flat tire?

I've driven over 800 miles across six months on a tire that was completely flat

You never notice the tires when you're getting into or out of a car? What the hell?

I didn't realize it had exploded

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

As far as I can tell, tires just blow up when they feel like it.

How do you know that? I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that you did not inspect the tire to see what kind of condition it was in before it blew, and probably not at any point for months before that.

Comment Re:Hands and feet? (Score 1) 163

Active Lane Assist is where the car corrects the steering to keep it in the lane. In the video in the article he looks like he's just going straight, but if you watch the wheel closely it will turn occasionally to keep the car in the lane. The driver never has his hands on the wheel. The Mercedes will use radar to sense and maintain the distance to the vehicle in front (not the best around motorcycles, or when going around turns), and lane assist will keep the car in the lane as well.

Comment Re:pfft, 3.5% overrun (Score 2) 132

The goal of NASA is worthy, but the reality is a little off. The people working for NASA are intelligent and capable, but management is a major issue. Not the management at NASA, the management of NASA. There is no reason that politicians, including the president, should have anything to do with assigning the projects that NASA works on. They should just give them a budget and let NASA manage their goals and spending. I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed, only to have the project canceled by a politician somewhere. The government only needs to look at a company like SpaceX to figure out that they need to get out of the business of managing what NASA does. Politicians are proving that a privatized space program is far more efficient and effective than a government-run program. That's not the way it needs to be, but that's the way it's going to be if people in Congress and the president keep interfering with what NASA works on and how they work on it. Imagine what would happen if the government gave SpaceX $12 billion dollars to develop a rocket by 2017. The rocket that SpaceX came out with would be able to land on Mars and take off again for Earth. NASA can't even get the thing into orbit on time. That's not the fault of the engineers working for NASA either.

Comment Re:Rather broad leap.. (Score 1) 139

Find some more feathered fossils and conclude that ALL dinosaurs probably had feathers.

It makes a little more sense to conclude something like that when the fossils are very old and of a different lineage than other feathered dinosaurs. The Guardian article does a much better job at explaining the reasoning than the NatGeo article.

Comment Re:Go Greenlight (Score 1) 200

They're equally scummy because both of them are willing to sacrifice whatever ethics and morals they claim to have and will buttfuck the public whenever they get a check that is big enough. It doesn't matter who started this, or who continued that, it doesn't really matter who was at the plate when the check came in. Neither of them are willing to stand up to corporations and actually have the integrity to say, sorry, I can't accept that money because I have an ethical problem with it, and I'm also going to tell everyone that you offered it to me. That's why they're equally scummy.

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