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Comment Incomprehensible Review (Score 1) 93

"keeping the signal locked, ..., doesn't always work. My Gnome desktop has blinked on and off a few times, inexplicably; a "Searching all signals" message appears on screen, but it only manages to automatically recapture the signal about half the time. ... ... the lamp will cycle through several colors and brightness levels. Sometimes this is fleeting -- just a momentary change -- but sometimes the image takes on a new hue and stays that way for minutes."

The projector doesn't work correctly, sporadically dropping the signal and randomly changing color temperature...and it's given an 80% grade? What sort of nonsense review is this?

Who is this review for? Who pays $500 for a dim, low resolution display to watch movies or surf the web? For the same price you can get a 22" - 36" 1080p display for home use, that shows a consistent, quality image. For the same price, you can buy a portable projector, that works properly, for professional presentations.

Comment Aerospace is incentivized to be over budget (Score 4, Insightful) 78

Those who denigrate aerospace projects for being over budget and over schedule are either naive or disingenous.

The unfortunate reality is aerospace companies are strongly motivated by the Federal Gov't proposal selection process to bid too low and too fast for high-risk projects like JWST. While not truely "lowest cost" bidder selection, it's understood that a winning bid will be in a certain range, regardless of whether its realistic. And the schedule proposals must also target certain bogies to have a chance of winning, regardless of winning.

And so companies bid low and fast to meet the proposal expectations and requirements, knowing that they'll make it up in cost-plus overruns as the Program proceeds.

And those running the programs know this too.

And ultimately, each project such as JWST is a one-of-a-kind endeavor. New technologies, new manufacturing methods, new test techniques are invented during the course of the project. It's difficult to predict the budget and schedule for doing something never done before; much less keeping to an optimistic budget driven by political needs more than the technical.

To those on JWST, they are doing incredible work, putting in long hours, and coming up with creative solutions to very challenging problems. And everyone of them wants to see JWST succeed.

Music

Submission + - Someone In Congress Actually Understands Mixtapes!

An anonymous reader writes: Most of us (for pretty good reasons!) have come to assume that our Congressional representatives are pretty far out of touch when it comes to things like technology and culture, but it's nice to see that at least one Congressman seems to understand that mixtapes and mashups aren't such a bad thing. Techdirt has the transcript of Rep. Mike Doyle's speech, which talks about the benefits of mixtapes, while wondering about why DJ Drama was arrested: "I hope that everyone involved will take a step back and ask themselves if mash-ups and mix-tapes are really different or if it's the same as Paul McCartney admitting that he nicked the Chuck Berry bass-riff and used it on the Beatle's hit 'I Saw Her Standing There.' Maybe it is. And, maybe Drama violated some clear bright lines. Or, maybe mixtapes are a powerful tool. And, maybe mash-ups are transformative new art that expands the consumers experience and doesn't compete with what an artist has made available on iTunes or at the CD store. And, I don't think Sir Paul asked for permission to borrow that bass line, but every time I listen to that song, I'm a little better off for him having done so...."

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