Xinvoker - Slashdot User

Comment Take the froggy path! (Score 1) 175

by Xinvoker on Monday January 25, 2010 @06:29AM (#30887902) Attached to: NASA Prepping Plans For Flexible Path To Mars

I think the flexible path is a step in the right direction. Rather than landing on the Moon and Mars every 50 years, NASA should move to establish permanent bases.Experience with asteroids is an important bonus too. Leaving LEO for private companies can also save them a lot of money to deal with that. Ares I can be scrapped, but Ares V could still be useful.

Comment Re:Two rovers, one stuck (Score 1) 70

by Xinvoker on Friday January 22, 2010 @03:11PM (#30862288) Attached to: NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Grinds "Cool" Rock

Unfortunately, they are on the opposite sides of the planet.

Not unfortunately, it's been done so that they can explore different areas and they don't have to compete for communication time with the orbiter.

Comment Reasonable (Score 1) 319

by Xinvoker on Friday January 22, 2010 @03:05PM (#30862226) Attached to: Panel Warns NASA On Commercial Astronaut Transport

Given that there isn't a single commercial company that has demonstrated human spaceflight to orbit, i think it's reasonable to be cautious. The Dragon capsule (The one that goes on top of the Falcon 9, SpaceX) is designed so that it can be modified to carry humans. But not even the rocket itself has been launched yet. If they successfully complete all their COTS resupply missions to the ISS, then they can be considered an option.

Comment Re:WikiLeaks & Iceland's Legislation (Score 1) 117

by Xinvoker on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @07:27AM (#30817836) Attached to: Iceland's Data Center Push Finally Gets Traction

I wonder if they will be able to keep that law if they decide to join the EU.

Submission + - Mozilla to ditch Firefox extensions ? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 10, 2010 @08:34AM

An anonymous reader writes: Although some have raised concerns about how sane switching to Jetpack is, it seems that Mozilla's new gadget is bound to replace the powerful extension mechanism we know. Maybe Mozilla wants to kill all the great add-ons we use daily with useless gadgets that just add an entry to the Tools menu, or maybe they just want to draw thousands of inexperienced developers into putting together a bunch of HTML and CSS that won't integrate in the UI. It seems to me that in light of recent decisions already covered here, Mozilla isn't going into the right direction. What do you think ?

8% of Your DNA Comes From a Virus 478

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 07, 2010 @11:14AM from the well-not-you-peronally dept.

An anonymous reader writes "About 8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to an article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cédric Feschotte, published in the Jan. 7, 2010 issue of Nature magazine."

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday November 26, 2009 @12:41PM from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Comment HiPER (Score 2, Informative) 234

by Xinvoker on Sunday November 15, 2009 @12:45PM (#30106358) Attached to: NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source

HiPER will be a European project that will take advantage of the findings of NIF to use IC Fusion as an energy source. (NIF has mainly military purposes).It will hopefully be ready sooner than ITER, and much cheaper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiPER

Submission + - Lucid HYDRA Open GPU Scaling Tested (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile on Wednesday November 11, 2009 @09:30AM

Vigile writes: Lucid is a small company that seemed to promise the impossible: truly open GPU scaling performance across platforms and GPU vendors. Since late in 2008 Lucid has been talking about and showing off its HYDRA Engine technology that combines a hardware and software layer to facilitate DirectX game performance scaling based on individual objects and task division rather than alternate frame rendering. This method allows HYDRA to use different GPUs of varying performance levels and scale accordingly. PC Perspective was able to get some time with the reference system and benchmark a few games and different GPU combinations including identical NVIDIA cards, NVIDIA cards of different GPU generations and even a configuration using an ATI and NVIDIA graphics card simultaneously, all improving game performance to some degree. Though there were some inconsistencies in compatibility the overall impressions were favorable and point to a successful launch later this winter.

Submission + - Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed (lbl.gov)

Submitted by r00tyroot on Thursday November 05, 2009 @08:09PM

r00tyroot writes: Berkeley, CA – Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

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