Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:A little more info from NASA (Score 2) 65

Essentially, yes. National Geographic's piece had this quote:

"Basically, it was a Y2K problem, where some software didn't roll over the calendar date correctly," said A'Hearn. The spacecraft's fault-protection software (ironically enough) would have misread any date after August 11, 2013, he said, triggering an endless series of computer reboots aboard Deep Impact.

As far as I can tell the significance of that date is that it is approximately 2^32 tenths of a second into the millennium.

Comment Re:centrifuge (Score 1) 158

Considering the costs and difficulties of sending extra mass along, maybe use another module instead of a counterweight. The crew can EVA between them or there could even be a connecting tube. If you use a rigid connector instead of tethers it will be easier to spin up and down. You can use an electric motor to spin up and maintain speed and possibly recapture the energy with a dynamo when spinning down.

Comment Re:pshaw! (Score 1) 521

US emissions have fallen due to the recession and to the increased use of natural gas at the expense of coal. The former won't last, hopefully, but if the latter trend sticks it would be good.

Transportation

Plane Simple Truth 460

brothke writes "In the TV show House, M.D., a premise that protagonist Dr. Greg House holds dear is that people are liars and stupid. Real life is often not far from House's observation. At the general public level, people are often misled by their lack of common sense, their deficiency in understanding statistics and basic science, and therefore fall victim to the lies of the myriad charlatans that claim to have something that fixes everything. A piece I wrote on that issue, New York News Radio — The voice of bad science, details that. While it is too broad to call the authors of Fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft: An overview of historical and future trends liars; their mediocre research created the scenario that far too many took their research as reality. Known as the Peeters report, after lead author P.M. Peeters, the authors of Plane Simple Truth refute the wide-spread belief that the fuel efficiency gains in the commercial aviation sector are erroneous, which is the principle theme of the Peeters report." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.
Security

Diebold Admits Ohio Machines May Lose Votes 502

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Premier Election Solutions (a subsidiary of Diebold) has acknowledged a flaw that causes the systems to lose votes. It cannot be patched before the election and the machines are used in half of Ohio's counties, but they are issuing guidelines for avoiding the problem that presumably contain a work-around. While Diebold initially blamed anti-virus software for the glitch, they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances' — something their initial analysis missed. It would be nice to hope that Ohio poll workers would be tech-savvy enough to make this a non-issue, but they had poll worker shortages last year and might need tech-savvy people to volunteer."
Image

Teens Arrested For Motorized Office Chair 338

German police have confiscated the world's fastest office chair and arrested its 17-year-old inventors. The duo added a lawnmower engine, brakes and a metal frame to the office chair and were reported to be driving it all over the streets of Gross-Zimmern. Police did not comment on the chair's handling or acceleration but I look forward to it being profiled on Top Gear.

Comment Re:It is most munificent of you, (Score 1) 489

The fact that it is not clear to you, in particular, what the code does is fairly unimportant.

In fact, it is not as you guess - it will override existing inline styles.

And finally, why would you bother building an argument on such an arbitrary supposition?

The Internet

Comcast Is Reading Your Blog 235

Paolo writes "A Washington student got a bit of a shock when he received an email from internet service provider Comcast about comments he had made on his blog. Brandon Dilbeck, a student at the University of Washington, writes a blog and used it to complain about the service he was getting from Comcast. Shortly afterwards he got an email message from Comcast apologizing for the problems and suggesting he might look at a guide it had posted on its web site. Lyza Gardner, a vice president at a Web development company in Portland used Twitter to complain about the company and was surprised to be contacted directly. Comcast is now monitoring blogs as a way of improving its image among customers. The company was ranked at the bottom of the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index."

Slashdot Top Deals

Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin

Working...