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Comment: Re: I think I've seen this plan (Score 1) 330

by RoverDaddy (#46322531) Attached to: Japanese Firm Proposes Microwave-Linked Solar Plant On the Moon
Really? The moon orbits the earth. Is it eclipsed by the earth 50% of the time? Of course not. You're only thinking about satellites in -low- earth orbit, which are shaded by the earth basically during half of each orbit. Put the satellites in very high orbits (geosynchronous itself is pretty high), and they are exposed to sunlight far more than 50% of the time. Heck, put a satellite in a polar orbit and for much of the year it can be exposed to the sun -throughout- its orbit.


by RoverDaddy (#46320623) Attached to: Japanese Firm Proposes Microwave-Linked Solar Plant On the Moon
That still means at any given time 1/2 the panels aren't doing anything useful. It also means on every lunar day the panels go through massive temperature transitions from incredibly hot to incredibly cold.

Instead, you could place a ring of panels in high orbit around the earth and have -all- of them working nearly all the time. I guess there might be a tradeoff due to the need for microwave transmitters on every generating satellite (since wiring together sets of panels many kilometers apart in earth orbit is probably not feasible).

Comment: Re:"Cord cutting" (Score 1) 424

by RoverDaddy (#46259651) Attached to: Time Warner Deal Is How Comcast Will Fight Cord Cutters
Some of us care about that $10 a month. In fact, I didn't get basic cable bundled with my internet until it actually -dropped- the cost of my internet (net cost of basic cable was actually -negative-).

But what happened next? Comcast decided to switch basic cable from analog to digital to save bandwidth. (Ok, no problem so far - that's actually a good idea). But what did they give basic cable subscribers then? A tiny box which converted the digital signal to 4x3 Standard Definition NTSC television (the old Channel 3 connection). In other words, crap. I could hook up an antenna to my TV and pull broadcast TV in 1080p HD, but the cable company puts me back in the 90's. You bet your ass I cared about that $10 a month. If adding basic cable to my internet connection cost me even one cent I wouldn't have been happy.

Comment: Re:MacGuffins, all of 'em (maybe a spoiler here) (Score 2) 93

by RoverDaddy (#45239663) Attached to: Computers and Doctor Who
That was really the weakest point of that story and really completely unnecessary. Considering that Doctor Who established that a Weeping Angel is a -stone statue- that can't move at all if anybody is looking at it, it makes no sense at all. First, the Statue of Liberty is not stone, and second, is there actually any point in time where -nobody- at all is looking at it?

Comment: Re:Obvious Solution (Score 3, Informative) 177

That's quite a generality. I've been to my daughter's high school and the teachers there don't appear to be lazy in the least, AND they seem to be leveraging technology in sensible ways. For example, the way my daughter can log in to a school web site and see every day's lessons and homework assignments.

Comment: Very limited scope (Score 2) 157

by RoverDaddy (#44912203) Attached to: A C++ Library That Brings Legacy Fortran Codes To Supercomputers
I took a look at TFA and followed up by reading the description of LibGeoDecomp:

If your application iteratively updates elements or cells depending only on cells within a fixed neighborhood radius, then LibGeoDecomp may be just the tool you've been looking for to cut down execution times from hours and days to minutes.

Gee, that seems like an extremely limited problem space, and doesn't measure up at all to the title of this Slashdot submission. It might really be a useful tool, but when I clicked to this article I expected to read about something much more general purpose, in terms of 'bringing Legacy Fortran to Supercomputers'.

By the way, regarding the use of the word 'codes': I don't think English is the first language of this developer. Cut some slack.

Comment: Re:But but but...... (Score 1) 262

by RoverDaddy (#44744915) Attached to: Chris Kraft Talks About The Decline of NASA

Lacks nuance.

The ONLY exception to this, is where the private sector is completely incapable of doing something economically, like super-heavy lift and expensive deep-space vehicles. ... The choice is very simple -- if the private sector can't "cut it" (as is the case with the missions the SLS is meant for), NASA needs the cash to do the work itself.

Well I guess Elon Musk hasn't gotten the memo yet, that there's no way he can do heavy lift, because he certainly seems hell-bent on trying. Now do I know whether or not designs like the Falcon 9 Heavy or Falcon X Heavy can ever get off the drawing board? No I don't. But I'd love to see Musk try, instead of bowing to 'prevailing wisdom' that only the government can do this.

Comment: Re:The reasons have disappeard. (Score 1) 79

In my area I think retailers realize there are too many consumers who don't get a newspaper, so a bundle of advertising is bulk-mailed every Thursday for free. It provides flyers for most of the area supermarkets, a few hardware and department store flyers, and occasionally some coupons. And a lot of it is still printed on newsprint. We also get the advertising envelope bundles like Valpak and the like.

By the way, I don't think newspapers are even a particularly cheap source of paper, considering how thin many local newspapers have become. You can get a better deal buying a ream of paper at an office supply store, but I admit it won't burn as well or protect your packages like crumpled newsprint.

Comment: Re:LinkedIn uses Node (Score 1) 304

by RoverDaddy (#44236261) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Node.js vs. JEE/C/C++/.NET In the Enterprise?



This isn't really an indictment of node, because I see this now wherever I look into the Web world (coming from the C/C++ world). So much immaturity (in the literal sense). Everything: HTML, CSS, Standards, Real-world browser support for said standards, VMs, best practices for JavaScript, tools like Dojo, Node, etc. all in flux. Documents that describe the "deprecated" old way, the new "approved" way, and the "better" way that doesn't work yet but will when the next revision is coming out (date TBD). A little more stability would go a long way.
