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Comment modern kids vocabulary (Score 1) 174

I assume they only have a finite number of words and need to add ipad, tablet, app, network, internet, steam, parental lock, minecraft, DS, exit, start, logon, quit, restart, level, character, profile, desktop, youtube, google and... hangon... aren't kids old enough to use the Oxford Junior Dictionary going to be using Google or an app to look up word definitions on their own tablets.....

Comment Re:Intel is keeping pace (Score 1) 103

>they have a patent minefield in front of them. nvidia and Intel have a patent agreement. Intel licensed their technology for 1.5 billion (over six years I think) AMD and Intel have patent agreements with regards to CPU technologies and some of those would apply to graphics (interconnects , memory etc) I doubt Intel and AMD would have trouble coming to an agreement with graphics patents.

Comment We need Terrestrial planet finder (Score 2) 112

TESS is a cheap substitute was what is really needed. Its not the real deal, earth like planet finder that is needed. It only looks at the same stars for 3 months. Which means it will only find "habitable zone" planets that orbit their stars 3 times in that 3 month period. i.e.. only red dwarf stars. The planets it finds will be tidally locked and subject to million of years of star flares (red dwarfs are typically flare stars). What we need is Nasa's dropped Terrestrial planet finder.

Comment Nuke them (Score 2, Interesting) 444

They should visit a number of different types of asteroids and nuke them to see the effect. Its really important knowing what will and won't work in protecting the planet from an asteroid impact. We have zero experience in how effective nuclear weapons are in deflecting or distinguishing asteroids. I don't think we want to be doing this when threatened by a large asteroid collision.

Comment Minimum Framerates and Graphics Lag spikes (Score 1) 132

I think Fermi can be summed up with the comments near the bottom of the Crysis Warhead benchmark in the review done by AnandTech. "The GTX 400 series completely tramples the 5000 series when it comes to minimum framerates, far more than we would have expected. " Fermi is a mac truck that ploughs though the tougher scenes. There is nothing worst than having smoke, explosions, and water falls etc causing graphics spikes.

Comment What I think we need to do (Score 2, Insightful) 281

If you want to find a needle in a haystack you need a needle finder (metal detector). Almost all of the existing radio telescopes have too narrow a field of view and/or too long a integration time. What we need is "An L-Band All-Sky Astronomical Surveillance System" as per the Ohio Argus (http://argus.naapo.org/). 5(?) of them would cover the whole sky. Each sees ~100 degree's of sky. They would need to be located in space to cut down the large amount ground thermal noise and perhaps use superconducting antennas.. e.g. http://www.esa.int/esaLP/ESAQGA2VMOC_LPsmos_0.html but pointing out into space (it is at this very moment as apart of its calibration). It needs to be able to spot 10 millisecond transients and have a real-time bandwidth of ~20 MHz (i.e. a real time 20 MHz of spectrum display with 0.1 hz of resolution for each image pixel in the sky). It initially would have a low sensitivity and would be upgraded over time with more antennas and more advanced digital processing (needed to cross correlate all the antennas for all angles) The technology to attempt this type of device has only recently come available (40nm and under FPGAs/GPUs). What if "Argus sees a brief, narrowband pulse at 1420.8807 MHz near NGC 752" (http://argus.naapo.org/~rchilders/) was actually coming from the sky. The chances of any radio telescope being pointed at exactly the right spot an being able to see 1400Jy). What if that pulse is only sent once every 5 months? What if there where other pulses outside of the Argus's 60khz bandwidth? I believe that any SETI beacon ("look here with a bigger telescope") would be a large phased array cycling though a large target list and sending a short burst of pulses on a number of special frequencies.

Comment Critical Mass (Score 1) 467

What if someone had reached a critical mass of enriched uranium before we knew it would start a fission reaction... And did so in a lab within a major city... I do think LHC is safe. But who knows. Yes the earth has been bombarded by higher energies than those in the LHC. But are they doing so under the same conditions as those inside the LHC. What if there is something we don't know that happens with say high energy collisions in a high very magnetic field (which probably doesn't happen naturally).

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