'Impeccable' except for the first Delta IV Heavy launch which put the dummy payload in the wrong orbit. Still did not stop the DoD from launching a really expensive satellite on it right on the next flight. Of course if your name is SpaceX instead of Boeing then you need to conduct dozens of continuous successful launches before being accepted. Fact is Falcon 9 also has an 'impeccable' launch record.

Also there are more companies working on the launch services market like Blue Origin which may eventually enter the market. There are other companies which could launch the US satellites but they're foreign companies so for US national security reasons they can't be used. Even if the company is run by US allies like Arianespace.

A lot of satellites launched by the USAF aren't that large to begin with and were launched on Delta II rockets until quite recently. One example is the GPS constellation satellites. As for the payload capacity problem you talk about once Falcon 9 Heavy is available, possibly this year, SpaceX will be able to launch bigger and heavier payloads than the largest EELV namely Delta IV Heavy.

As for having a proven track record most of the claims spouted by ULA apologists are plain bullshit. The Delta family had a spotty track record regarding new rocket development. The Delta III program was a disaster and the initial Delta IV Heavy launch didn't go along that well either. Atlas V has a solid launch record and it is cheaper than the Delta IV but it uses Russian engines.

Despite the first Delta IV Heavy launch failure the DoD still chanced it and used it to launch a really expensive earth reconnaissance satellite right on the next flight. But because SpaceX isn't Lockheed Martin or Boeing they can't get the same privilege.

Troll uh? Slashdot keeps getting dumber every month. C++ apologists, Apple apologists, NVIDIA apologists. Are you all dumbasses or has this turned into a cesspool of astroturfers and sycophants?

NVIDIA has removed OpenCL support from the debugger, has not updated their OpenCL from version 1.1 for years unlike either AMD or Intel which have had 1.2 and 2.0 releases since then. They removed OpenCL support from their standard Linux dev kit and it has to be installed separately. They want to push everyone into CUDA. They have someone from NVIDIA chairing the OpenCL Khronos committee but then again Microsoft also used to have a big presence in the HTML committee while delivering the worst standard compliant browser in the market.

newer hardware features (such as intra-warp shuffle and floating-point atomics) are not accessible

You can use inline PTX inside OpenCL code on a NVIDIA card. I use it for the popcnt instruction, which is named popc in PTX, since NVIDIA is too lame to implement OpenCL 1.2 support on their driver which would have that as standard even if the hardware has the instruction support for it.

If you're fine with being stuck with OpenCL 1.1 while AMD has OpenCL 2.0 support sure. NVIDIA treats OpenCL like a bastard stepchild.

The 'stealing' is basically industrial espionage. It is similar to what the Japanese used to do several decades back. Except the Chinese do it for military technology as well and unlike what the Japanese used to do, which was mostly reverse engineering, the Chinese actually steal design documents and other things like that as well.

This guy is one example.

Uh. Just ask around how happy people were when Italy designed the VEGA rocket. A solid rocket launcher which can launch satellites to orbit. That's basically military grade technology. The Italians had an ambition to have their own SLBMs in the 1970s called Alfa. Now I am not saying they will use the technology for nukes but if they want to do them in the future the technology will be there.

On a robotic space mission propulsion technology is less likely to be exchanged. But things like autonomous flight software and precision flight which would be quite adaptable to drone technology may end up being exchanged.

Then again the Chinese are almost as advanced as the EU in drone technology now so it probably doesn't matter.

You do know when you get a loan that you owe the lender the price of the house + his profit right?

If you sell your house to buy some other house you will have to buy a cheaper house. Assuming you manage to sell it for the same price you bought it. If you sell it for a lower price. Well I don't need to spell it out for you.

What's likely. Nice joke. Do you think all those excess houses they build have been sold by now? They haven't. Neither are they going to crumble any time soon. Houses are usually designed to last around 20 years without major repairs. Maybe in 5 years they'll be gone.

There has been some uptick in construction but it has mostly been restricted to expensive city centers and other places like that. Houses for the rich not for the middle class.

Nudity by itself is not a problem. But things like rape (and that is sometimes the least of it) are a problem for kids to watch.

In fact the whole reason this segment even exists in Japan is because of the hard restrictions they have on pornographic content.

Still if you think Jin-Roh and Ghost in the Shell are for kids just because they are animated you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. For example Jin-Roh is 'R' rated while a lot of movies you guys think are for grownups are PG rated.

If you can't get past the medium and see the story for what it is you aren't much of a viewer anyway.

So have I. So what. It's still crap.

...by and large I think it's a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas...

I said basically the same thing here a couple of days ago and got downmodded for it. Thank God for Ken Thompson.

I think the lottery system worked fairly well actually.

That's assuming you want to live there at least for the amount of time you need to pay the house. You are also assuming that house prices can't go down.

They can sue them for trademark violation that's what they can do.

Jin-Roh.