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Comment wtf? (Score 3, Insightful) 263

Wow, that's a really poorly written article. From TFA:

The catastrophic risk came from the SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), a small nuclear reactor that was going to be placed on the moon to power experiments, carrying Plutonium 238 Apollo 13’s lunar module.

What does that even mean? Anyway, if it was in the LEM, did the LEM even survive rentry? Since it had no heat shield, etc.? Is the LEM still attched to the CM during re-entry even? Pretty sure it's not.

Comment Re:World News brought to you by a /. poll (Score 1) 292

The MLB is the biggest market for baseball and draws the best players from all over the world. It's a cinch to say that the winning team is the best single team in the world. There is a World Baseball Classic started after those jerks at the Olympics threw baseball out of the competition, and based on that you could say Japan is best at baseball, but the team that beat the Texas Rangers is probably the best team in the world at the moment. Other than the Oakland A's, who will win the world series next year. I hope! :)

Comment Re:Enforceability? (Score 1) 388

There's some case law on this related to the Super Bowl, and whether or not I can buy two tickets to the SB and then do a "Win a trip to the Super Bowl!!" contest. IIRC & IANAL If you're drafting too much off their brand and trademark, they may have some grounds. You can do whatever you want with your iPad, including giving it away, but if you do an ad campaign in which the free iPad is basically the main thrust of the campaign, you start to tread on tricky ground. If you were like "Win great prizes, such as an iPod, a new Mustang or a Nomad MP3 player!" you're on much better ground. If your contest ad looks like an Apple ad, well, you're in trouble.

Comment Re:Meh... (Score 1) 190

So Yong Zhang deserves to get paid... for putting hard work into violating license agreements and porting other people's emulators which are used for... what exactly? Certainly not playing stolen videogames! Because then you might need to go up the chain a bit and feel bad for the software creators who weren't being paid. But no one ever seems to give a shit about them when something gets in the way of playing stolen games.

Comment Re:guilty eh? (Score 1) 964

I leave my wireless router unprotected. I keep my machines locked down and I don't really care if my nieghbors use my wifi, I don't suck down a lot of data anyway. Also, I think the world would be a better and more useful place if all wifi access points were open. But what's scary to me now is if some neighbor used my router to do something illegal (proscribed porn, bot net, whatever) some moron might decide that I'm somehow culpable because the bad things passed through a box in my house. This case actually has me reconsidering my open access policy.
Earth

Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half 414

bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."

Submission + - Any Persistent Home Videoconferenceing Solution?

An anonymous reader writes: I'm moving very soon for work, and will be several hundred miles away from my young family for six to nine months. Obviously I'll travel back as often as possible, and there's always Skype and XBLA video, but the whole "now it's time to talk to dad" thing seems... a little weak. I was wondering the Slashdot community could help me come up with a more persistent solution.

Ideally what I want is an always-on connection between a pc/monitor/camera/speakers in my old kitchen and my new kitchen, so if we're in the kitchens, we can see each other and interact semi-normally. (We're a kitchen-focused family.) Most solutions I can find time out pretty quick, or require some knowledge on the part of the users, and the tech-savvy people are only gong to be in one kitchen, to put it politely!

I'm sure, given enough time, I could google a solution, but I don't have a ton of time. I do have a reasonable number of Windows PCs and Macs (and game consoles), but no alt. OS machines, so something for retail OSes would be better — I haven't tested the PS3 camera for long durations, but I know the conferencing quality with a PS3 is pretty good, and that could be an option too. Any camera recommendations would be good. We have sweet access at our house, but it will need to be wireless to the kitchen from the router.

Thank you very much for any help you can provide!
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony Blazing Trails or Following the Herd? (industrygamers.com)

donniebaseball23 writes: On Monday, news came down the pipeline from SCEE president Andrew House that Sony wants to focus on a younger audience for the PSP with future titles. My immediate reaction was one of shock and confusion. After all, in an interview with IndustryGamers at E3, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime noted that, “the way I would describe the market for the Nintendo 3DS would be the launch market that we had with the Nintendo DS plus the launch market that maybe PSP had.” When your primary competitor is looking to the exact market that you’ve catered to, why would you abandon that market? There was a time when Sony Computer Entertainment was a trailblazer, bringing things to the industry ahead of everyone else. Nowadays, however, it seems that Sony is content to merely fall in step behind everyone else and simply try hard to not fall too far behind.
Transportation

Submission + - Supercritical Fuel Results in 30% MPG Increase (greencarreports.com)

thecarchik writes: A flurry of innovations to boost fuel efficiency is in the pipeline. One of them comes from a startup, Transonic Combustion, which claims its technology delivers fuel into the cylinder in a supercritical state--essentially, a fourth state of matter (after solid, liquid, and gas) in which the liquid is heating above its boiling point at very high pressure. When gasoline is injected into the cylinder as a supercritical liquid, Transonic says, it burns faster, cleaner, and closer to the center of the combustion chamber, meaning less energy is wasted as heat loss through the cylinder walls.
Apple

Submission + - Opinion: Apple should build a fab (eetimes.com)

PabloSandoval48 writes: With Apple and its key foundry partner, Samsung Electronics, on a collision course in several end-user markets, Apple should consider building its own semiconductor fab to build the A4 processor that powers its iPad and iPhone.

Comment Re:Smith Chart (Score 1) 1186

One has the right to get a stupid tattoo, or spout anti-Semitic nonsense, or do any number of things. That doesn't magically free you from the consequences of the action (such as having to wear long sleeves at work, or being fired for being a bigot.)

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