Comment Pencil Re:Pen (Score 1) 635
I'm partial to my drawing pencils. Simple tech that simply works.
Try Fun With A Pencil by Andrew Loomis
https://archive.org/details/an...
Comment Re:Government Lawsuit? (Score 1) 113
Unlikely. The full Falcon 9 has a good track record so far. Few rocket programs don't have at least one or two explosions along the way (and some have many more).
Comment Re:How good is SpaceX, really? (Score 1) 113
The video was captured by an onlooker. Because of the noise, SpaceX has to publish when tests happen, so fans know when to head to one of a couple of areas to watch and record them.
Comment Re:Our they could use Planes (Score 1) 140
They have (or had) a mostly exclusive contract with GeoEye for one of their satellites, though the US government held priority over that in case they needed access to the imagery.
Google recently purchased SkyBox, and so may soon be launching its own constellation of smaller satellites. These will reportedly have high-res video capabilities, so it may be possible to watch traffic (or other things) moving in real- or near-real time.
Comment Re: This was the best... (Score 1) 252
They used the opportunity afforded by him leaving to kill MacLean Stevenson's character, but it wasn't out of spite. They did it to remind the audience that the show took place during a war. The studios were livid with the decision, as they had not been consulted and didn't like that they couldn't bring him back later.
You may be right that B5 was the first to plan it this way, though that wasn't the way it was originally phrased.
Comment Re:This was the best... (Score 2) 252
"And best of all, this was the first series to kill off 'major' characters"
That's not true. Off the top of my head, MASH killed Henry Blake, and that was probably the first time a major character was killed off in a major series (other than a cast member dying). It was much more sporadic before the 90s, but it did happen.
Slashdot Asks: Should Schooling Be Year-Round? 421
Around the world, American schools' long summer break is viewed as an anomaly, and the long summer seems to be getting shorter. While most American primary and secondary schools used to start after Labor Day, more and more of them now open sometime in August (and that's not counting the ones that have gone to a year-round schedule). Some of my younger relatives started a new school year last week (in Indiana), while Baltimore schools start later this month. Both Seattle and Portland's kids have until after Labor Day (with start dates of the 3rd and 4th of September, respectively). The 4th is also the start date for students in New York City's public schools, the country's largest district. Colleges more often start in September, but some get a jump start in August, especially with required seminars or orientation programs for new students. Whether you're in school, out of school, or back in school by proxy (packing lunches or paying tuition), what time does (or did) your school-year start? Would you prefer that your local public schools run all year round, if they're of the long-summer variety? (And conversely, if your local schools give short shrift to summer, whether that's in the U.S. or anywhere else, do you think that's a good idea?)
Comment Re:What about Verizon FIOS? (Score 1) 146
Their status page promised roll-outs starting in late 2012, but it also has horrifically bad information, even for an ISP ("Verizon will use a IPv6/56 address format, which means this will support 56 LANs.") I've asked about it several times, but no one at any level seems to know what's going on. The routers have been IPv6-enabled since spring of 2013, which got a lot of people excited. There's a rumor that the hold-up has to do with newer set-top boxes and broken IPv6 stacks, but no one knows how believable that is. (I don't buy it. I just think Verizon is refusing to spend the money necessary to implement it.)
Comment Re:Backfire (Score 1) 105
My favourite cab app at the moment is Kabbee. You enter your start and end points and a handful of taxi companies give you automated quotes. In terms of price: Black Cab > Addison Lee > Uber > Kabbee.
Comment Re:Let them drink! (Score 1) 532
If we get nationalized hellcare it IS gov't's bizness. In such a single payer system you have to weed out those who are an excess burden on the body politic.
Submission + - Employees who stay more than 2 years paid 50% less (forbes.com)
fleebait writes: According to Forbes:
The worst kept secret is that employees are making less on average every year. There are millions of reasons for this, but we’re going to focus on one that we can control. Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.
The worst kept secret is that employees are making less on average every year. There are millions of reasons for this, but we’re going to focus on one that we can control. Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.
Comment Re:Never trust a corporation (Score 1) 59
I am absolutely sure NASA will get right on that.
Heh, there is a story in an issue of Heavy Metal called "Patriot" it is the most prescient story about modern times I had read 20 something years ago.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's the best rapid development language to learn today? 2
An anonymous reader writes: Many years ago, I was a coder—but I went through my computer science major when they were being taught in Lisp and C. These days I work in other areas, but often need to code up quick data processing solutions or interstitial applications. Doing this in C now feels archaic and overly difficult and text-based. Most of the time I now end up doing things in either Unix shell scripting (bash and grep/sed/awk/bc/etc.) or PHP. But these are showing significant age as well.
I'm no longer the young hotshot that I once was—I don't think that I could pick up an entire language in a couple of hours with just a cursory reference work—yet I see lots of languages out there now that are much more popular and claim to offer various and sundry benefits.
I'm not looking to start a new career as a programmer—I already have a career—but I'd like to update my applied coding skills to take advantage of the best that software development now has to offer.
Ideally, I'd like to learn a language that has web relevance, mobile relevance, GUI desktop applications relevance, and also that can be integrated into command-line workflows for data processing—a language that is interpreted rather than compiled, or at least that enables rapid, quick-and-dirty development, since I'm not developing codebases for clients or for the general software marketplace, but rather as one-off tools to solve a wide variety of problems, from processing large CSV dumps from databases in various ways to creating mobile applications to support field workers in one-off projects (i.e. not long-term applications that will be used for operations indefinitely, but quick solutions to a particular one-time field data collection need).
I'm tired of doing these things in bash or as web apps using PHP and responsive CSS, because I know they can be done better using more current best-of-breed technologies. Unfortunately, I'm also severely strapped for time—I'm not officially a coder or anything near it; I just need to code to get my real stuff done and can't afford to spend much time researching/studying multiple alternatives. I need the time that I invest in this learning to count.
Others have recommended Python, Lua, Javascript+Node, and Ruby, but I thought I'd ask the Slashdot crowd: If you had to recommend just one language for rapid tool development (not for the development of software products as such—a language/platform to produce means, not ends) with the best balance of convenience, performance, and platform coverage (Windows, Mac, Unix, Web, Mobile, etc.) what would you recommend, and why?
I'm no longer the young hotshot that I once was—I don't think that I could pick up an entire language in a couple of hours with just a cursory reference work—yet I see lots of languages out there now that are much more popular and claim to offer various and sundry benefits.
I'm not looking to start a new career as a programmer—I already have a career—but I'd like to update my applied coding skills to take advantage of the best that software development now has to offer.
Ideally, I'd like to learn a language that has web relevance, mobile relevance, GUI desktop applications relevance, and also that can be integrated into command-line workflows for data processing—a language that is interpreted rather than compiled, or at least that enables rapid, quick-and-dirty development, since I'm not developing codebases for clients or for the general software marketplace, but rather as one-off tools to solve a wide variety of problems, from processing large CSV dumps from databases in various ways to creating mobile applications to support field workers in one-off projects (i.e. not long-term applications that will be used for operations indefinitely, but quick solutions to a particular one-time field data collection need).
I'm tired of doing these things in bash or as web apps using PHP and responsive CSS, because I know they can be done better using more current best-of-breed technologies. Unfortunately, I'm also severely strapped for time—I'm not officially a coder or anything near it; I just need to code to get my real stuff done and can't afford to spend much time researching/studying multiple alternatives. I need the time that I invest in this learning to count.
Others have recommended Python, Lua, Javascript+Node, and Ruby, but I thought I'd ask the Slashdot crowd: If you had to recommend just one language for rapid tool development (not for the development of software products as such—a language/platform to produce means, not ends) with the best balance of convenience, performance, and platform coverage (Windows, Mac, Unix, Web, Mobile, etc.) what would you recommend, and why?
Comment Re:Never trust a corporation (Score 5, Funny) 59
The only good way to deal with corporations is to have orbital bombardment capability.
Unfortunately you have to get them to build it for you.
Comment Re:Scottish Advice (Score 1) 259
Coverage can be checked here:
http://www.cable.co.uk/guides/...
All of the major universities have coverage except St. Andrews, which is really remote.
