The copyright running out on XP wouldn't solve the problem of a lack of support.

Precisely this, support only happens where there is money or self interest in doing so. And the kind of people who've been coasting along on Microsoft's free patches aren't going to suddenly start paying Bob's Computer Support and Lawn Maintenance for patches just because the code was released into the public domain.

access to unfiltered information will make people THINK!

Bullshit. Even a single day of reading /. will rapidly disabuse anyone with any intelligence of that notion.

Hopefully, the recommendation engine will work better than Google's current one on YouTube. Yeah, it's a pretty low bar, but Google's record on building useful UI's is... spotty at best.

That's not much help when your rover is 10km from base.

Seriously, there's so much that's damn difficult about Martian exploration that we *know* we don't know.... that I can't help but laugh when people like Elon Musk or Mars One proposes doing it on the cheap and on a short timeline.

However, I thought that Roku (which I don't have) did exactly that - I seem to remember read they had a cross-channel search of some kind (though I would guess it had some limitations). Does anyone know if that's the case?

Roku does have a cross channel search - but it appears there are some channels which it doesn't search or don't allow themselves to be searched. Crunchyroll is one such. Amazon is another.

From TFS: ""Google's Project Ara, an effort to develop a modular smartphone platform, sounded at first as much like vaporware, but Google is actually making it happen. In an upbeat video, Dave Hakkens (the guy who created the Phonebloks design that appears to be the conceptual basis for Project Ara) visited the Google campus to see what progress is being made on the project."

How is this not vaporware? Kewl magnets and flashy app screens barely qualify as sizzle and are nowhere near steak.

I think the point was something more like, "We don't need to worry about genetic diversity if we can just pack embryos." That way, you can staff the spaceship with an appropriate number of people for making the trip and establishing a colony, and then use the embryos once you hit the point of needing genetic diversity.

Which misses the whole point of the article - you need genetic variation in flight, right from day one.

If you are willing to sacrifice the coolant, an atmosphere as feeble as Mars' shouldn't stop evaporative cooling

They've been using water as a sacrificial coolant for decades, the problem on the Martian surface (as opposed to on orbit) is the evaporation rate (and thus the heat carried away) is slowed just enough to require increasing the surface area of the evaporator to inconvenient dimensions. The physical effort expended in working in a space suit produces a lot of heat - and the suits are very well insulated to control the loss of heat.
 

I wonder how abrasive the dust storms are? There are some pretty decent wind speeds, so you could get away with using big radiators, lightly built, unless the grit eats them.

The windstorms aren't that abrasive, while the wind speeds are high the atmosphere is very tenuous. I think I read somewhere that a 100mph wind on the Martian surface is the equivalent of a 5mph wind on the Earth's surface. (That's why Martian dust is closer to Lunar dust than terrestrial.) The problem is that big (suit) radiators push up the size of the airlocks, cause balance and movement problems, etc.... as it requires some damn big radiators to transfer sufficient heat. (Tenuous atmosphere == very low efficiency transfer.)

ersonally I think it'd make a really interesting reality show. In fact, they could fund the Mars trip like that.

A global hit on the scale of Dr Who would only barely pay the interest and a bit of the principal. You'd need global income on the scale of the Olympics to take a serious bite out of the principal - and you'd need that income for the better part of a decade. Not happening.

It wouldn't be as bad as orbit(where the nominal temperature is also damn low; but where being cooked alive because you've got nothing but black-body radiation to shed heat from your metabolic processes

Actually, being on Mar's surface is worse than being on orbit. On orbit, you can use evaporation to carry away heat (radiation is a minor component). On the surface, the atmosphere is *just* thick enough to screw up evaporation cooling but not thick enough to enable pure convective/conductive cooling.

Mod parent up!

There's only one piece of advice those who think they may be suffering from anxiety or depression need: Seek professional help as soon as possible, and ignore the ignorant fuckers who tell you to just man up and move on.

The level and type of professional help you'll need may be a counselor, may be full on treatment - but you'll never regret it.

"From the book description and cover, one would get the impression that this is an all new work. But it is not until ones reads the preface, that it is detailed that the book is simple an assemblage of collected articles."

And what's wrong with that? Collections and anthologies have a long a distinguished history in non-fiction as well as fiction - for a reason. Books are far less ephemeral than magazine (and especially web!) articles, and seeing all the material at once or having it collected in one place is often advantageous for study and research.

Sneer because the material is faulty or lacking, or because the author is wrong or clueless. But don't sneer because a book doesn't live up to the very recent conceit that something must be all-new to be of any value.

"Would you like to see a half-million-dollar TV show in which four teams of indie developers and Youtube personalities compete to create amazing videogames?"

No. And I can't imagine what drugs somebody was smoking to even think it was a good idea in the first place. It's boring as hell to watch people talk and pound on keyboards. Essentially internal processes (like the excitement of creating a game) are invisible to the third party observer. There's a reason why reality shows are filled with drama real, fake, and everywhere else on the spectrum between the two extremes. That's what pays the bills.

The production company grasped that, the self absorbed prima-donna "indies" did not. Seriously, when the introductory paragraph and a good chunk of the overall text is the narcissistic writer bragging on himself and how cool the "scene" was... I could see the train wreck coming.

So what is the point of this story?

One of Slashdot's most beloved features - the hourly Two Minute Hate.