You need to pay some one off to get that job

Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.

Of course, any applicants will probably need to actually work for a month or two until everyone forgets about this and moves on to the next government outrage...

Google should do something (and soon) because Apple's metal API supports GPU compute workloads. Sure you can do GPGPU using OpenGL ES but that is more limited in scope than a full CL implementation...

First, I consider this a very cool development, that a major GPU manufacturer actually caught on that people use their hardware for more than just gaming. That said...

Be careful what you wish for. Offloading work from a CPU to a power-hungry GPU makes tons of sense in a desktop, or even server (for certain workloads) environment - ie, "plugged in". Doing the same on a mobile device, not so much. On IOS, people have consistently reported drastically reduced runtimes per battery charge when running "hardware accelerated" apps. And don't take that as a rant against Apple - I have no doubt we'll see the exact same problem when Android finally standardizes similar support.

If the systems were affordable without the special arrangements and tax breaks, this article wouldn't exist in the first place because the panels would be popping up all over Florida.

"Affordable" means different things to different people.

As the GP meant it, "affordable" means having a positive ROI with a reasonably short payback period (well under 5 years, currently, and that assumes going totally off-grid; a grid-tie installation can pay for itself in literally half that). As you mean it, someone living month to month on their minimum wage paycheck can't afford to sink $20k up-front into a PV installation.

As a cruel irony, Florida's law doesn't stop those who can front $20k from putting in their own solar array. Instead, it stops the people who most need it from using the "lease to own" model made popular by those companies already mentioned - Kinda the same idea as a cell phone subsidy with a two year contract, except on a bigger scale.

The ROI calculators show a first year 7% ROI (of course, this will increase as electricity prices increase).

Although not DIY tends to basically double the price, you realistically have a 2-3 year payboack, or an ROI of 33-50%.

I have a 5YO toy 500W DIY system, currently, and it has already more than paid for itself, without bothering to get a second meter to take advantage of generation in excess of consumption (yeah, you want to know why the utilities suddenly and "inexplicably" wanted to move to smartmeters? Unlike the old analog meters, they won't simply spin backward if you make more than you use, so FUCK YOU, consumer-with-solar).

The Brookings institute clearly analyzed this from the POV of a monopolistic unitility company, because for end-users, a home solar array practically counts as a no-brainer with current prices, assuming you can afford to sink a few grand into it up-front.

Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States

Well, f*ck you and your stupid short-film then!

Just 5 Minutes ago I deleted the open source Spring RTS and the shite they build. 3 different lobbys with 3 different technologies, none of which work or are documented, the one that works - a redo of a webbased lobby in QT called "Weblobby QT" (No joke, seriously ...), has no documentation whatsoever on getting it to work with an existing installation and the 90 seconds before the mono-based lobby crashed a 3rd time some guy told me, they'll redo the lobby for the Steam release. Jesus HB Crickey, if I wanted a steam game for which I have to hand in my name, credit card data, finger prints and my DNA, I'd certainly *not* do it for your shitty game. In fact, I did *not* buy the very neat Shadowrun Returns for linux precisely because it's only available on steam. ...

Just 5 minutes ago this Spring RTS crap! Planing to release on steam ... how about learning to programm first? ... Unbelievable. Now I come to /., click on the upper new story and now this.

Seriously, I'm sounding like a jerk right now, I know, but I get the impression that there are people doing open projects that have no business doing any such projects at all. What's the point in releasing your stuff for free (liberty) if you're relying on shitty flakey libraries and technologies (mono, etc.), especially if you're *increasing* the complexity of your product or its availability and deployment or - as in the case of this art-jerk movie - hand it over to some DRM ridden POS distribution corp. for distribution. ... If I had donated to this project, this would be precisely the moment where I'd be super-pissed.

My 2 cents. Sorry, I'm really pissed right now.

Seconding Ubiquiti gear. I use these (not your specific models, but I love their nanostations) and they simply don't die. Literally months of uptime without a glitch, and even after a power outage, they pick right back up doing their job without human intervention.

And range? I've used a pair of bridged nanostations, without any external antenna (they come with a built-in 120 degree sector), to cross slightly over a mile (with line of sight) pushing full speed without even breaking a sweat.

For about 50% more than a cheap consumer grade router (and the same price or less than the supposedly "high end" consumer crap), these suckers count as a no-brainer if you want something that just works.

Warning - These do not make a good "my first WAP". Getting them configured correctly (even legally, since they'll readily let you blow the doors off ERP and go outside local frequency restrictions) the first time can take even someone familiar with what all the features mean quite a few trials-and-error, and I'd consider that one of their weakest points. But they do it all, and they do it well... WAP? Router? Bridge? WDS node? Check.

/ No, I don't work for them.

"Given a sufficient amount of time all software either becomes free open source software or goes extinct."

Ah, good point. Thanks!

Although I seem to recall recently reading (on Slashdot, even) about individual particles having a "temperature", at least in the quantum if not in the thermodynamic realm, by virtue of their entropy - Clearly that concept doesn't apply as used in TFS, which means it strictly in the thermodynamic sense.

Their thinking is that at very low temperatures, ordinary particles can sometimes behave like unparticles. In other words, their properties become independent of the scale at which they're observed.

So their properties become independent of scale... When one of their properties falls below a certain value on the scale of temperature?

And dogs can look like lemurs, as long as they don't look too much like dogs.

Ah, thank you for the correction! I didn't realize NASA's version actually came from someone other than Shawyer, or that they had in fact tested the original design (with more positive results).

If you've automated your job, *shouldn't* you get new tasks to do? You're being paid to do the job to the best of your ability. You've done that by automating - but that leaves you on-the-clock time to do other productive tasks.

If they want to pay me hourly, then yes, absolutely. As long as employers do their damnedest to push the limits of "exempt", however, then very much no. I get paid to perform certain tasks to the best of my ability. As long as my employer doesn't care whether that takes me 40 or 60 hours a week, then I don't care if it only takes me 20.

Note that I mean this somewhat in the abstract, in the sense that I refuse to work for someone who expects me to work more than 40 a week regulary. My current employer actually treats me pretty well, and as a result, yes, if I automate task X, I'll spend my newly-found time doing the rest of my work somewhat better (I wouldn't specifically say "picking up new tasks", because we all know that what we can do in 40 hours doesn't mean we should to produce the optimal result).

Interesting. I wonder what other popular and controversial "science" is missing this particular step.

Well, in this case, NASA's version of this experiment lacks exactly that. They deliberately used a different design from that used (with reproduceable results) by both the British and the Chinese.

Yes, Kudos to NASA for going to the trouble of setting up an actual "null" hypothesis test - Except, how about they try the experiment as documented before they go tweaking the conditions in unknown ways? Yes, they thought they built a zero-thrust version of the setup... Except, that presumes that Shawyer actually has the correct theory behind his understanding of the effect. He can have the underlying physics completely wrong, yet still have discovered one of the most important effects ever.

Just over a century ago, N rays were detected by over a hundred researchers and discussed in some three hundred publications

And just over two hundred years ago, the French Academy of Sciences steadfastly refused to believe that rocks could fall from space, with an abundance of supporting evidence to demonstrate that these "meteorites" had clearly come from weather conditions right here on Earth picking up rocks and flinging them about.

Funny thing about (good) science - It doesn't simply dismiss new ideas simply because they disagree with existing theories. Oh, but for the first time in human history we have it right? Yeah, about that unified theory of quantum gravity, Doctor...

PDFLib GmbH (german LLC) build exactly one product: PDFLib. And they've been doing that since 1997. AFAIK the company was run by one guy - the initial developer - alone for most of the time. Now it's probably a shop of 5 or so.

So it's not FOSS - yeah, that's a real shame. But the devs get to eat, you can demand service and response if you run into a bug and you can expect a good product and with PDFLib you're probably going to get it too.

I haven't come across a single project doing non-trivial PDF stuff that doesn't use PDFLib. I've used it myself a little, and the cookbook that comes with the product was very good, so it comes recommended.

My 2 cents.

A HUD should be limited to presenting information that helps people drive. Talking on the phone even hands free is still a distraction, visual navigation systems are also an unnecessary distraction.

It distracts me far less to take a brief glance at the GPS map at a time of my choosing, than to have it yell at me every 30 seconds and I then have to figure out if it means turn here, or the next exit, or I missed my turn, or it wanted me to magically teleport to the road below the bridge I just went over, etc.


Honestly people put the phone down and pay attention to the road, your life and the lives of others depends on it.

Putting the ability to wave and glance at that map right in front of me, rather than needing to fumble with something in my lap while trying to make brief glances at it? I'd call that a net win.

I will agree with you 100% about the non-navigational capabilities of this device, however. Seriously, a fucking Twitter feed? C'mon, what sane person consider that a good idea?