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Comment Re:But? (Score 1) 276

Unfortunately I have, used to work for a company that custom made their own CNC controllers and software to work with their custom built machines. Wire wrapped cards & technology that was almost as old as I am, the hardest part was finding enough 486/P1 machines & industrial monochrome monitors to work with it.

Comment Re:Stupid (Score 1) 130

XBMC is an inferior media platform when compared to Plex.

You understand that the front end media player for Plex is an XBMC fork right?.. If it wasn't for the server/transcode features Plex would be just a shiny skin on the same essential core.

As someone mentioned above Plex is great till you throw 50k songs at it and another 5-6k videos into it then its true colors start to show as it munches through any/all available ram and it brings your normally fine machine to its knees.

Comment Re:Good job. (Score 3, Insightful) 43

The first post is actually useful and made by an AC, there is reason to stick around /. not all is lost yet.

On a more serious note the AC hit the nail on the head, the point of doing test drills is to identify problems so they can be addressed before a bunch of people die or get irradiated so bad that they glow in the dark.

Comment Re:Incentive? (Score 1) 354

And if you think that CIA doesn't use the "lest something happens to your family" just as much as other intelligence agencies, I have land on the moon to sell you.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the CIA is specifically tasked as an external force with little/no authority to act inside the US as opposed to the NSA who is tasked with monitoring the dirty calls you make to your girlfriend/wife while your at work posting on /. ?..

Power

Laser Fusion's Brightest Hope 115

First time accepted submitter szotz writes "The National Ignition Facility has one foot in national defense and another in the future of commercial energy generation. That makes understanding the basic justification for the facility, which boasts the world's most powerful laser system, more than a little tricky. This article in IEEE Spectrum looks at NIF's recent missed deadline, what scientists think it will take for the facility to live up to its middle name, and all of the controversy and uncertainty that comes from a project that aspires to jumpstart commercial fusion energy but that also does a lot of classified work. NIF's national defense work is often glossed over in the press. This article pulls in some more detail and, in some cases, some very serious criticism. Physicist Richard Garwin, one of the designers of the hydrogen bomb, doesn't mince words. When it comes to nuclear weapons, he says in the article, '[NIF] has no relevance at all to primaries. It doesn't do a good job of mimicking secondaries...it validates the codes in regions that are not relevant to nuclear weapons.'"
Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
NASA

Submission + - Warp Drive Looks More Promising Than Ever in Recent NASA Studies (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: The first steps towards interstellar travel have been taken, but the stars are very far away. Voyager 1 is about 17 light-hours distant from Earth and is traveling with a velocity of 0.006 percent of light speed, meaning it will take about 17,000 years to travel one light-year. Fortunately, the elusive "warp drive" now appears to be evolving past difficulties with new theoretical advances and a NASA test rig under development to measure artificially generated warping of space-time.

Comment Re:HIPPIE DIRTBAGS! (Score 1) 409

We can escape to all kinds of places, there are plenty of known planets in the "Goldilocks zone" which may** support life, unfortunately to get there we would have to significantly improve cryogenics or invent some form of faster then light travel.

There disaster averted you may now continue enjoying your bowl of Cheerios.

Did I mention that to get there it could take hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of years to get there?... Ohh well if you really want to escape I suppose your willing to wait the little bit of time to get there.....

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