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Comment Re:Not the first programmer. (Score 1) 110

Almost all of that technical heritage in the logic of weaving was maintained by women across cultures. An example contemporary to the lovely Ms. Lovelace and Mr. Babbage would be the founding of the Rhode Island School of Design. That institution was funded by ship's captains to maintain their most talented daughters in programming Jacquard looms for the local textile industry and other arts. Today it is a eminent art and design school if not the best. If not the first programmer, Lovelace was the first non-inventor/nerd that programmed, ie. the first application programmer.

Comment Upcoming Paper should be interesting (Score 1) 39

They are publishing results in Astrobiology to create a standard metric for analog space suits. Operating standardization is a great next step for this field.

On a human-factors standpoint it will be interesting to see the energetic differences between the suits. One issue is they are being tested in different place with different wearers.

Data Storage

NSA's New Utah Data Center Suffering Meltdowns 241

linuxwrangler writes "NSA's new Utah data-center has been suffering numerous power-surges that have caused as much as $100,000 damage per event. The root cause is 'not yet sufficiently understood' but is suspected to relate to the site's 'inability to simultaneously run computers and keep them cool.' Frustrating the analysis and repair are 'incomplete information about the design of the electrical system' and the fact that "regular quality controls in design and construction were bypassed in an effort to fast track the Utah project."" Ars Technica has a short article, too, as does ITworld.
Microsoft

MS Researchers Develop Acoustic Data Transfer System For Phones 180

angry tapir writes "Smartphones that support NFC have been making their way onto the market, but many handsets still don't support the wireless technology. As an alternative, Microsoft researchers have prototyped a system that instead uses a phone's microphone and speaker to transmit and receive data. The P2P data transfer system uses a novel technique of 'self-jamming' to stop nefarious third parties from monitoring transfers, and the researchers believe it's more secure than standard NFC communications. No word on whether it sounds like the squeal of a 56k modem."

Comment Logic: (Score 2) 237

Asteroid retrieval is about $1-2 Billion spread over a decade. Single moon landing is at an order of magnitude higher at $10-20 Billion with unknown duration. This is what happened with Shuttle and Station and appears to be happening with SLS: they eventually sucked cash out of other NASA programs while legislators direct even more resources into those single projects as if 10,000 people working together can't manage more than one task.

We should go back to the Moon but that should not prevent us from also snagging an asteroid. The funny thing is that the returned asteroid was planned to go into Lunar or very eccentric high orbit, either would have been a great shake-down cruise for Orion before going to the Moon.

Comment USB drive & printing (Score 1) 262

iOS 7 should let the device act as normal flash storage. This is a crippling weakness in Apple's current devices and traces all the way back to the Newton's custom filesystem in the 90s. Seamless printing, especially with all the wireless printers around, is a no-brainer.

The Media

Chicago Sun Times Swaps iPhone Training For Staff Photographers 316

frdmfghtr notes (via Cult of Mac) that "the reporters of the Chicago Sun-Times are being given training in iPhone photography, to make up for the firing of the photography staff. From the CoM story: 'The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs. It's a also a sign of how traditional journalism is being changed by technology like the iPhone and the advent of digital publishing.'"

Comment Re: How would you feel about it? (Score 0) 420

If the drone is over someone else's property, it is trespassing in their airspace. This may be especially true below 500' and anything over that is FAA controlled. So the drone flying neighbor is either going to be violating your property or common airspace.

If the neighbors' houses were close together and the person was still over their property but actively observing your property? That would be interesting in court.

Comment Re:What NASA needs. (Score 1) 378

Funny how the truth barely gets modded. Space manufacturing "will" be huge even much bigger than Earth's industrial base someday. Digital Fabrication is going to push this forward very quickly in general. Luna has specific issues in severe lack of volatiles. For now any precision machinery will still be built on Terra.

The idea of it being "cheaper" to launch deep space flights from the moon seems to come from a purely gravitational notion. Ignoring economics, politics and thermodynamics (not to mention that any clients are going to be in LEO) this idea is and always has been a has been.

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