Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Easy excuse for parents with misbehaving kids? (Score 2, Insightful) 711

by JohnMurtari (#33286988) Attached to: A Million Kids Misdiagnosed with ADHD?
Folks, You just got to believe that some parents are "relieved" to have a misbehaving child diagnosed as ADHD and medicated. Then, it is not their fault. They can tell all their friends, "Johnny was acting out at school for a while, but he has ADHD and is now on medication..."

Like everyone else is saying I also would have put on drugs. All my elementary report cards said, "Johnny talks to much in class!" With enough positive and negative reinforcement -- I learned to control my behavior.

I was an Honor Graduate of the Air Force Academy and a jet instructor pilot -- and a programmer in my later years! I hate to think what would have happened if I'd been drugged.
Moon

Why NASA's New Video Game Misses the Point 205

Posted by Soulskill from the if-only-astronauts-could-rocket-jump dept.
longacre writes "Erik Sofge trudges through NASA's latest free video game, which he finds tedious, uninspiring and misguided. Quoting: 'Moonbase Alpha is a demo, of sorts, for NASA's more ambitious upcoming game, Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, which will feature more destinations, and hopefully less welding. The European Space Agency is developing a similar game, set on the Jovian Moon, Europa. But Moonbase Alpha proves that as a recruiting campaign, or even as an educational tool, the astronaut simulation game is a lost cause. Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place, while thousands of miles away, the most advanced explorers ever built are hurtling toward asteroids and dwarf planets and into the heart of the sun. Even if it was possible to build an astronaut game that's both exciting and realistic, why bother? It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit. If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, its games should focus on the real winners of the space race — the robots.'"

Comment My degree in "Hotel Front Desk Admin" - no good!? (Score 1) 1138

by JohnMurtari (#32209694) Attached to: Too Many College Graduates?
What! You mean all the money I spent on getting that great degree in Hotel Front Desk Administration isn't worth $80,000! But all the commercials said it was.... maybe I should have gone for that Computer Science major after all!

Seriously - nothing wrong with being a receptionist or a lot of other jobs. But college catalogs seem to be more like vocational training schools -- just a lot more expensive!

Submission + - XKCD does it again - define malamanteau? (xkcd.com)

Submitted by JohnMurtari
JohnMurtari writes: The folks at nerd comic XKCD have created another web mystery. In today's strip they provide a pseudo-Wikipedia entry for the word "malamanteau." They define it as "a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism." However, the Wikipeida entry was deleted recently. Is this a cover up? What is the definition of malamanteau? What secrets of the universe may be unlocked by its usage?

Inquiring minds what to know. Your thoughts?

Submission + - Why is Google supporting Flash? 1

Submitted by pcause
pcause writes: Google seems to have rushed to Adobe's defense and has added Flash to Chrome and is adding it to Android. The question is: why" Flash is a big security issue Web browsers,seems to need more patching that IE6, and is proprietary. Google has usually been a champion of standards and openness and has created a lot of great Web UIs with JavaScript. Given JavaScript and HTML5 there aren't many things we'll need Flash for and from a security point of view, we're better off without it.

Why is Google so eager to champion Flash as opposed to a set of standards they, Apple and Microsoft *all* agree on?

Comment Re:What the X-37 is REALLY doing in orbit... (Score 1) 234

by JohnMurtari (#32090230) Attached to: US Air Force Launches Secret Flying Twinkie

Technically, yes it is possible. However, it would require a massive amount of delta-v to rendezvous with a significant number of enemy sats. And, that doesn't provide any reason to make something that can return to earth. You could launch a vehicle capable of your proposed mission on a normal rocket. Also, the enemy would notice that you launched something that is visiting all of their sats. At least, they would know you were doing close-pass espionage runs. They will be monitoring the space near their sats to see if anything is on an intersecting orbit that they need to maneuver away from in order to avoid a collision.

You don't have to visit all of them in one mission and given the complexity -- why not reuse the vehicle (it would be cheaper). Regarding ground radar, it is not as easy as you think to keep a continual monitor and we probably have the best system there is. The X-37B also has a stealthy shape. The dual rudders is pure F-22. They said it was to fit into the nose of the Atlas for launch -- but it may also reduce radar signature.

Comment What the X-37 is REALLY doing in orbit... (Score 3, Interesting) 234

by JohnMurtari (#32088128) Attached to: US Air Force Launches Secret Flying Twinkie

This is just conjecture. On a 'big' war day we are going to want to disable enemy satellites. We have ground based interceptors -- but there can be delays in launch windows, plus the 'bad' guys are going to be on guard and can take some evasive actions.

How about our little X-37 with a cargo bay and manipulator arm goes and pays those 'nasty' satellites a visit right now and attaches a few pounds of high explosive with a radio detonator. When the war starts you push a button and they all disappear!

Just in case they send a maintenance flight up, our little bomblets can also be equipped with a radio controlled 'spring' that detaches them from the satellite. No one is the wiser.

Possible?
Science

Submission + - Supersonic sky jump starting 23 miles up! (nytimes.com)

Submitted by JohnMurtari
JohnMurtari writes: The New York Times is reporting dare devil Felix Baumgartner is preparing for a parachute jump from 23 miles high... "jumping from a helium balloon in the stratosphere at least 120,000 feet above Earth. Within about half a minute, he figures, he would be going 690 miles per hour and become the first skydiver to break the speed of sound. After a free fall lasting five and a half minutes, his parachute would open and land him about 23 miles below the balloon. At least, that’s the plan, although no one really knows what the shock wave will do to his body as it exceeds the speed of sound..."
Robotics

Submission + - How robots think: an introduction (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: Computing's early pioneers anticipated that robots would come a lot further, a lot faster than they actually have. But despite the slow pace of progress over the initial decades of the computing revolution, robots have recently begun to advance quite rapidly. Here's what's behind the most recent advances in robot intelligence.
NASA

Submission + - Higher life under the Antarctic, NASA finds (physorg.com)

Submitted by sandertje
sandertje writes: Previously, only microbial life was expected to live in the deep Antarctic ice. Now, NASA has found a shrimp and a jellyfish tentacle under six-hundred feet of crushing ice. This opens up questions as to whether these 'higher forms of live' could also thrive on other planets with ice caps, such as the Martian poles or Jovian moon Europa.

Submission + - Court cuts 4th Amendment protection for email (volokh.com)

Submitted by
arbitraryaardvark
arbitraryaardvark writes: "Federal Court Eliminates Fourth Amendment Protection in E-Mail. Professor Orin Kerr, a 4th Amendment expert, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, says that the 11th Circuit has found that police don't need a search warrant to search your email. http://volokh.com/2010/03/15/eleventh-circuit-decision-largely-eliminates-fourth-amendment-protection-in-e-mail/. He also says the court got it wrong,and explains why. Last Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit handed down a Fourth Amendment case, Rehberg v. Paulk, that takes a very narrow view of how the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail. The Eleventh Circuit held that constitutional protection in stored copies of e-mail held by third parties disappears as soon as any copy of the communication is delivered. http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200911897.pdf"

Comment Re:Incorrect (Score 1) 447

by JohnMurtari (#31381204) Attached to: Why Paying For Code Doesn't Mean You Own It
This person is quite correct. I'm amazed people think that if I pay you to develop some software some scratch -- that you OWN the result? It is "work made for hire" and the person that pays, owns by default. Normally, when I'm involved in this type of work for a customers I'll add a clause that at least says I have the right to "reuse" portions of the code in other work -- most don't have a problem with that.
Power

Submission + - Have your own fuel cell to power your home. (businessweek.com)

Submitted by JohnMurtari
JohnMurtari writes: An article in Business week describes a news conference attended by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. A Silicon Valley start-up today took the wraps off a fuel cell designed to enable individual homes and businesses to generate their own power.

Bloom Energy Corp. showed off the Bloom Energy Server, which is being billed as a game changer for the clean energy industry. The solid oxide fuel cell is built to generate electricity with a mixture of oxygen and renewable or traditional fuels — all without creating any emissions...they noted that 20 corporate big hitters, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, Staples, eBay and Google already are using Bloom Boxes. Today's news conference was held at eBay's San Jose headquarters...

They are hoping to see Bloom Boxes become a common fixture in people's backyards and basements before 2020. He estimated the cost of systems for individual homes at about $3,000.
Science

Submission + - Mental health & Relativity - connected! (nytimes.com)

Submitted by JohnMurtari
JohnMurtari writes: For all you folks who wonder at the growing number of mental illnesses and the psycho-babble describing them. You may find hope in a recent NY Times article that says the West is exporting its notions of mental illness,

"We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad. This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. "

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close