Posts by Kalmairn

HOT YOUNG STAR about to GIVE BIRTH, long range images show

No better way to start a Friday...

...than to read about something as truly awesome as this. The picture alone was worth the trip.

Cheers!

Dungeons & Dragons relaunches with 'freemium' version 5.0

Re: Paper shortages

"I would suggest checking out Pathfinder"

I second this. I greatly enjoyed 3.5ed despite a few quirks, and discovering Pathfinder re-ignited my interest in paper RPGs. Works great with minimal rules, but has as much detail as you could possibly want if you crave it - it's good for kids and adults alike. I played a simple, somewhat Monty Haul-ish game with my wife and son for years - it was more about fun than gritty realism.

NPCs had a terrible survival rate.

4ed seems too influenced by online gaming. I loved the concept, but it didn't seem to execute well. I'll take a look at 5ed, but I'm not impressed with WotC's stewardship of the D&D name. I'm more likely dust off my PF and give it a whirl.

Ex–Apple CEO John Sculley: Ousting Steve Jobs 'was a mistake'

...and in other news...

Water is wet and the sky is blue.

In all seriousness, hindsight is only 20/20 when you let it; you can't let today's knowledge judge yesterday's.

There's no saying that Jobs would have become what he did had those events never happened. You can never second guess, because the path you took is the one that got you where you are. Only that sequence of events resulted in Jobs being who he was, and Apple becoming what it is.

More interestingly, this sounds like a little remorse, even if twinged with a sense of lost profit opportunity; a seeming rarity among top executives. For that, I'll give due credit, such small amount it might be.

HPC boffins: Our HOT MODELS will help you cope with DISASTER

Such a let-down.

I thought they were going to say they had developed HPCs that could run while flying through the winds of a tornado, or ran on water when flooded.

This is much less interesting.

Google hit by Monday morning blues: Talk, Hangouts, Sheets crash

With such vital services and heavily used down...

...you'd think there'd be a lot more activity in the comments here.

(Sadly, I'm lost without my Google Talk, but only because it's my daytime link to my wife.)

Supermassive BLACK HOLE to stuff MYSTERY gas BLOB into open maw

Re: Biggest meal?

This is a cool article, but I agree that either I'm just not savvy enough to understand the intent of some of these statements, or the statements simply don't make sense:

"a mysterious gas cloud around three times the mass of Earth"; then, later in the article:

"But if G2 is hiding an old star, the display could be less dramatic, with the black hole only getting a few sips of the gas while the star passes by, dense enough to escape the event horizon."

Which is it? Is the cloud of gas ~3x the mass of Earth? Or does it contain a star, which by default makes it significantly larger than 3x Earth?

Or am I missing the point?

Amazon won't break into sweat about Google's cloud. Yet

Re: Already there, Mate!

Unfortuantely, a lot of what Microsoft advertises is not quite up to the standards of reality.

That said, they are on-pitch and on-track. That's precisely where they are going, and is their ace in the hole in the cloud space. Amazon and Google's challenge is to crack into an existing enterprise market before Microsoft slams the door shut. Microsoft's challenge is what it always has been: match their capabilities to their marketing, hopefully before they alienate too many customers.

Ace In the Hole: Microsoft "Owns" the Enterprise Space

Amazon will, and should, only concern itself with Microsoft. In a real sense, Google and Amazon are on the same side of this fight; they're both attempting to lever into a market that is directly and inexorably linked to core enterprise technologies - and that's Microsoft's domain.

As the market continues to dabble with these XaaS (IaaS, PaaS, really) services, I continue to wonder when Microsoft (and, honestly, VMWare) will open their hypervisor enough to dynamically link with customer internal technology environments. What I want to see is the ability to seamlessly migrate a server from my "private cloud" to a hosted cloud and back using VMotion or Live Migration.

Imagine managing available resources, not just allocation, through SCVMM or vCenter: add more pCPUs, vCPUs, vMem/pMem, etc., all within a single integrated console. Once OpEx and CapEx crosses, if it ever does, transition from one to the other with nearly no impact on the consumers within or accessing your organization. That's the power VMare or Microsoft could have, a power that Google and Amazon can only provide via potentially expensive and difficult APIs.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting Microsoft is "right" or "best" - I'm suggesting that it's a matter of positioning, and Microsoft is much better positioned long term than Amazon or Google (or both combined).

World's OLDEST human DNA found in leg bone – but that's not the only boning going on...

Evolution? What?

These 400,000 year old fossils prove that human evolution did not happen, therefore we can only assume we were created 6000 years ago.. We'll get Texas started on updating American textbooks right away.

Seriously. One discovery does not a theory break. The beauty of the world we love is that its life ebbs and flows. Let's put away our Jump to Conclusions mat and keep on keeping on the science.

Microsoft bans XXXXBOX gamers for CURSING in online combat

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<COMMENT CENSORED>

This account will not be permitted to post comments for 24 hours. User is relegated to commenting on Slashdot.

KILO-MACH SONIC BOOM probed in fireball embers of 1572AD SUPERNOVA

</science> Holy crap...

...that's just a super cool picture. <science>

Google patent: THROAT TATTOO with lie-detecting mobe microphone built-in

I remember one time...

...when the Chair of the USPTO said there were no more new ideas and closed his office. He was partly right, at least in this case. This is hardly "new", and barely at all useful.

World's first 3D-printed metal gun 'more accurate' than factory-built cousin

Interesting.

Leaving the obvious gun debate aside.

I'd been wondering when it'd be possible for 3D printing technology to be more precise than machine technology. This goes a long way to illustrating that 3D printing is the way to go when precision is absolutely essential. We're only steps away from technologies that could get right down to the orientation of atoms or molecules on each layer of a surface as it builds.

I wonder if such technology will be used to build such precision in other objects -- tighter tolerances on internal combustion engines, tighter tolerances and winding in electric motors, perfect spheres for ball bearings and the like.

BETHLEHEM-grade SUPERNOVA possible 'within 50 years'

YAY.

A new reason for whackjobs to crawl out of the woodwork carrying signs telling us all to prepare for the second coming.

I guess that also assumes they believe this science crap to begin with. They'll probably just wait until they can see it, then claim they knew all along.