Comment Your best bet (Score 1) 264
Study the design of the "microwulf" and it's relatives. Considering that hardware prices has dropped since 2009, your task might be achievable.
Comment Wait (Score 5, Funny) 269
FTA;
The images do not line up perfectly because of differences in lighting conditions, angle of the LRO Camera, and other variables.
Like being on a different sound stage??
Ridley Scott To Direct New Blade Runner Movie 288
In his first accepted submission, fwarren writes "Alcon Entertainment, best known for the movie The Blind Side, purchased the rights to Blade Runner earlier this year. The next order of business? Hire Ridley Scott. Scott has signed on to make a new Blade Runner movie. At this point it is not known whether it will be a sequel or a prequel. With no script or writer at this point, I think it is safe to say it will be a roller coaster ride for the next few years."
Moon Younger Than Previously Thought 212
TaeKwonDood writes "Analysis of a piece of lunar rock brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 has shown that the Moon may be much younger than previously believed. Researchers say that the findings allow for one of two possibilities: the moon is 200 million years younger than previously thought, or the theory that the moon used to be a molten ocean is wrong."
Comment Re:Compiler Technology (Score 3, Informative) 260
>Considering that the 80386 was in production until late 2007 for embedded systems, I'd imagine it has.
And why this might be quite relevant despite the some of the disparaging remarks in the comments here.
Internet Eats Into Time-Warner Cable Porn Profits 228
Hugh Pickens writes "Big cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable keep saying they don't see Web video cutting into their business, but there's at least one big, dirty exception. Time Warner Cable said in its quarterly earnings report that its video-on-demand (VOD) business dropped significantly in the last quarter. Asked to explain where the drop came from, CEO Glenn Britt came clean, more or less: much of the drop is because, instead of renting a porn video in HD for $9.98, Time Warner's customers are getting their porn fix on the internet for free. 'One of the things going on with VOD is that there's been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down, largely because there's that kind of material available on the Internet for free,' says Britt. 'And that's pretty high margin.' To be fair, drooping porn rentals don't account for all of Time Warner Cable's VOD decline. Chief Financial Officer Rob Marcus said that while 'the biggest piece of the year-over-year decline was in fact in the adult category,' the rest of the drop is because there weren't many big pay-per-view events like boxing matches last quarter, and because regular movie rentals are down, too."
Comment Re:I enjoyed it (Score 1) 225
Agreed. I went in expecting a bunch of cowboy cliche's and some mean aliens for a summertime popcorn movie. I also expected cowboys shooting at aliens. And that's exactly what we got. I also don't understand why everyone is dumping on the movie. I think some of it is that moviegoers have become "spoiled" on such high production values that they have become too hard to please.
Comment Re:7,991,764 issuing 08/02/2011 (Score 1) 325
This is one small thing most Slashnutters neglect to think about.
No. They're a patent troll. They are sending patent notices to twitter and applications that interface with twitter, but yet they file their patent in late 2010 when all this was already underway??
Comment Re:Is there a translator in the house? (Score 1) 104
'Recast their culture', hmm? What the fuck does that mean, exactly?
Instead of using whips and chains on their programmers, they cast them in vats of molten lead. With a handful of jewels.
NASA's New Bag Turns Urine Into Sports Drink 182
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Atlantis shuttle is set to launch this Friday, and its crew will be testing an innovative device that can recycle human urine into a sugary sports drink. The bag uses forward osmosis technology and features a semi-permeable membrane capable of isolating water from virtually any liquid. Recycling urine in this way has a significant effect on a ship's payload, and considering that a single pound adds $10,000 of cost, that slight weight difference can translate to serious savings."
CT: I'm at Kennedy Space Center now, tweeting as @cmdrtaco. And I think I'll stay away from the sports drink.
Comment Re:Science loses again (Score 0) 409
BZZZZZZT! Wrong, their is nothing wrong with Medicare/Medicaid. What's wrong is health care costs which are increasing at rate twice that of inflation and is 17% of GDP. Which is not just affecting entitlement programs, but the country as a whole.
SCOTUS: Clean Air Act Trumps Emissions Lawsuits 303
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration. The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a US appeals court that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change. In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency under the clean air laws. The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions."
Submission + - Bob Pease, RIP 1934-2011 (electronicdesign.com)
eclectro writes: Stunning news that famed analog engineer Bob Pease, on the way back from Jim William's memorial service crashed his beloved 1969 VW Bug and was killed. It has been apparently reported in the Mercury News.. It's a hard week for those in electronics.
Comment Re:My life (Score 1) 172
Wow, it seems like I've been hearing stories about DNF all my life, and now suddenly it's really coming out! It's like the end of an era.
There should be a law against it coming out, so that the meme can be preserved.
Maybe all the boxes will be empty and will simply have a small piece of paper that says "you really didn't think we'd actually release anything, did you?"
Comment Re:I don't think the problem is that they didn't.. (Score 1) 413
Radio Shack once sold some of the highest quality affordable home audio
And who bothers to have "high end" audio anymore? It just needs to work and blast out a loud noise - and last two years before it's thrown out for the next set of two inch speakers.
So much as the cnc and soldering reflow goes, it seems like the number of people doing that kind of thing on that level anymore equals the number of replies to this Slashdot thread!
Seeing this from the Rat Shack really has me wondering if they aren't in their death throes aka Ultimate Electronics and Circuit City (not to mention all the countless mom and pop shops that had "Hi Fi" in their name).
It's kind of a laugh. I remember when there was a shop that sold calculators, LCD watches and stereo equipment (and there were no cell phones then). Now you can find all that stuff blister packed at Wal Mart or at a grocery store even.
