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Comment Aren't we the cylons? (Score 4, Insightful) 272

In Battlestar Galactica, the humans are facing the Cylons technologically superior force with advanced cyberweaponry. Doesn't that make us (the USA) the Cylons? Sure China is a threat, but I haven't heard of any damage from any Chinese 'attack.' I have, however, heard of Stuxnet, which had real economic, political and technological consequences.

Comment Re:be smart (Score 0) 283

Being an engineer is about learning how to solve problems. 'Asking Slashdot' is about getting other people to solve your problems. If you want to be an engineer, you had better learn how to start solving your own problems, or answering questions like the one you posed, by yourself. That's my best advice for getting into your chosen field.

Comment No one cares about your server (Score 3, Interesting) 182

Dear Slashdoters. I know that you can build a better, faster, cheaper NAS that will perform fellatio over SSH and wipe your ass for you. But, I don't care... at all. According to you, I overpaid for my two NAS devices, a Drobo FS (serving media) and a Synology DS211+ (photo backups (profoto)). But I'm exceedingly happy with them. Transfer speed is sufficient on the Drobo to serve 1080p content to 2 tv's and an iPad simultaneously, and the Synology keeps up with my image editing software just fine. I've upgraded the drives in the drobo once so far, and just like their videos claim, everything just worked. The Drobo survived a drive failure last year, in the middle of 'movie night,' and video playback from the drobo was unaffected. - I'm glad that these NAS devices were reviewed, but I can't imagine why so many have come to this thread to post their server builds. The people, like myself, buying these NAS devices are buying them so we don't have to build our own servers.

Comment Single Engine Lockheed? (Score 1) 120

The Lockheed design has a single engine... Which is a bad idea on an airplane. It's good to think to the future, but none of these ideas are practical, and I don't think they're meant to be. Airplanes don't change in leaps and bounds they evolve slowly, building on proven technology and designs. These are just concepts produced because these companies feel they have to show something new and radical in return for taking all of nasa's money.

Comment Re:DjVu? (Score 3, Interesting) 223

It might not be around as long as FITS, but isn't DjVu more suited for the digitization of manuscripts?

The Vatican isn't choosing FITS because it's more suited towards digitization of manuscripts. The church intends to be around literally forever and they're choosing FITS because it too, should be around as long as there is SCIENCE! From the FITS wikipedia article: 'FITS was designed with an eye towards long-term archival storage, and the maxim once FITS, always FITS represents the requirement that developments to the format must not render invalid existing files using older versions.'

Government

Robo-Arm Signatures Are Legal, Gov't Buys One 154

AndreV writes "It's endlessly comforting to know a recently designed and implemented long-distance robotic signing arm can produce signatures legal in both the US and Canada. The aptly named LongPen replicates the handwriting from a person writing in a remote location — with the unique speed, cadence and pressure of a human pen-stroke. It started as an idea from author Margaret Atwood to help free her from grueling, multi-city, multi-country book tours, but the hard stuff was done by a bunch of Canadian haptic gurus, whose design took into consideration many factors of the human arm and how we write. How it works: from the author-end, data protocols are set up, and the pen pressure is measured on a special tablet. The data streams to the robot, while algorithms smooth out all the missed points. Complex math operations were used to help the mechatronic limb repeat the hand's motions without unnecessary jerking, and programmers had to 'scale time' or 'stretch time' by breaking down the movements, essentially tricking the eyes into thinking the robot is writing fast. It was recently adopted by the Ontario Government to sign official documents. It helps criminals sign books, too."

Comment An anonymous reader? (Score 4, Insightful) 240

From his website:

"I'm currently starting up an exciting new company, Zink Foods. We are poised to revolutionize your perception of "healthy food" by combining taste and nutrition in a completely unprecedented way. Finally, real food, real taste, real nutrition!"

This sounds like a real expert that we should listen to? I guess it's not that hard to use slashdot to drive up your pageviews afterall.

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