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Comment SpaceX (Score 4, Informative) 235

I've been following SpaceX recently so I thought I'd point out a few things about them in regards of breaking new ground.

The company went from being founded to launching its first commercial payload to orbit in about seven years. (Which seems pretty quick in aerospace timescales)

They're consistently delivering supplies to the ISS for about half the price of their competitor using the Dragon capsule which is also able to return cargo back to Earth.
The Dragon capsule was designed with carrying passengers in mind, and version 2 of the capsule which will be undergoing launch abort tests soon is scheduled to start taking astronauts up to the ISS in about two years or so.
It will also be capable of landing propulsively.

They've undercut the prices of all existing competitors significantly, making them scramble to design new rockets to match SpaceX's price, but they'll only be ready around 2020.
Meanwhile SpaceX has been testing reusing the rocket's first stage.
The upcoming mission to the ISS will have its first stage attempt to land on a barge at sea, with the ultimate goal being landing back at the launch site.
Elon claims a theoretical potential hundred-fold price reduction for launches, but even a ten-fold reduction would have a significant effect on the industry.

In the longer term, SpaceX has plans for much larger engines and spaceships, with the ultimate goal of landing on Mars and eventually enabling people to move to Mars for around $500K.

Comment They forgot to mention. (Score 5, Funny) 166

They forgot to mention how the final test, called the Kobayashi Maru, involves hacking a Gibson by playing tic-tac-toe while receiving a blow job from Jeff Bridges.
By this point it's not that difficult, because it's Unix and you know this, but making your MacBook interface with the alien computer you built from the schematics sent by Setec Astronomy is a bit of a challenge.
And of course those who fail will be taken away by agents and made to mow the lawn for the rest of their lives or something.

Comment So, apparently... (Score 1) 227

One of the sites allowing people to 'rent' the movie had a few problems with the implementation, allowing people to share the URL with anyone, as well as just save the movie file from their browser.

I was expecting people to be able to just record the screen and then post it to teh torrents, but that turned out unnecessary as a prefect quality 1080p file has been available since yesterday.

It was as bad as I expected.

Comment Re:Makes you wonder... (Score 1) 187

I guess it targets the very specific group of people who'd burn a copy of the disk from a friend but wouldn't know how to download a torrent or use a crack.
Which is probably not very large these days.

And there's probably some sort of legal advantage to being able to claim they tried protecting it, DMCA and whatnot.

Comment Re:how about an objective view? (Score 2) 379

He can look at shaky videos some people shot on their phone of rocket flares in the distance and make all the assumptions he wants but if you look at the actual impacts, This is what an unintercepted impact looks like and This is what a piece of an intercepted rocket that landed a few hundred meters from my house looks like and the vast majority of impacts are of the latter variety.
Not that a hunk of metal falling on falling from the sky is nothing to sneeze at, but the shrapnel doesn't seem to have quite the penetrating power and if you're indoors you should be relatively safe.

Comment Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man. (Score 2) 169

I'm not quite sure what the argument that's being made here is.
Games are an audio/visual medium that involves user interaction, there are many paths to take from that point and many of them may harken back to media that came before.
Some people may enjoy more the challenge of the mechanics, or the challenge of playing against other people, or art style, or the story, or the general ambiance.
So it seems to me that it's a rather limited way of thinking to try to make some sort of sweeping statement about what games should and shouldn't be.

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