If inflatable furniture were such a great idea it would already be ubiquitous
That's some great circular logic you got there... of course the status quo is always imminently rational and based on the best information, and unconstrained by fashion or market forces.
Instead being horribly vulnerable to hot or pointy things.
Pointy... maybe. Hot, not so much. We're talking about melting plastic here, and there's no reason you can't have a nice thick cover sheet/topper to completely fix that imaginary issue.
Great, a piece of furniture that seats two with a weight limit of what, 375 pounds? 450 tops? That you certainly can't fuck on without an undesired pop...
Rated at 500lbs, and have you ever heard of a pressure-relief valve?
Did you have anything to contribute to the discussion other than a baseless "nuh uh!"
This may be slightly off-topic, but hey, this is idle so I'm probably improving the quality of discussion, anyhow...
Why aren't inflatables more popular? A traditional queen size mattress costs at least $200, meanwhile a queen sized air mattress costs $20, or an order of magnitude less expensive. Inflatables aren't perfect, but these days they're quite stable and nearly as comfortable as a regular mattress. What's more, they don't have springs or padding to wear out quickly, as cheaper regular mattresses do.
I've even seen a little $50 love-seat that was inflatable. Considering being able to eliminate the steel frames, springs, cross-beam supports, and all that polyurethane, it should be easy to make them cheaper, and again be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than conventional sofa, chairs, etc.
The benefits of super lightweight, incredibly compact when packed away, and incredibly portable, plus cheap and very little material used, seems like a slam-dunk. So why don't we see more of this? Whether with recycled sea-plastic, or not. People like to say how incredibly cheap consumers are, yet this seems like an obvious, huge expense saver, that it seems almost nobody takes advantage of. Why not? When did we become furniture snobs?
If only there was actual scientific evidence that its a problem.
There is TONS of evidence that it's a problem. It is unambiguous. TFA even directly admits to that fact.
We would expect to see an increase in accidents, but we see a decrease since 1990
False logic. We are seeing cellphone caused accidents, but that doesn't mean the increase will completely wipe-out all other automotive and road safety improvements that have been ongoing for decades.
Without cell phones, there would likely have been an even sharper decline in accident rates.
"It's clear [from the scientific literature] that cell phones in and of themselves impair the ability to manage the demands of driving," Reimer says.
So, for all it's handwaving, the article says nothing. Talking on a cell phone is dangerous, but cellphone bans haven't resulted in a reduction in crashes, and TFA has NOTHING to say about WHY that is. They talk about certain people being more dangerous drivers, but they DON'T claim that talking on a cell phone is safe, as the/. summary very clearly implies.
How's that working out for Julian Assange? Once you spread the information, their priority changes from containment to revenge.
When being harassed or threatened by authorities, rule #2 is to make damn sure you NEVER break the most trivial of laws. Rape is right-out... And it's just as easy to believe that Assange is an egocentric ass who did, in-fact commit the crime he's accused of.
So your argument is that the android platform is crap and stuff doesn't work on it
Nope. The "compatibility" I mentioned earlier has to do with hardware... whether a given chipset can send the proper signals. It would be simpler with only 7 different sets of hardware, but "simpler" might just mean "doesn't work anywhere, ever, no matter what"... That's pretty simple, isn't it?
And that google lets shitty apps get out all the time to the point that you cannot trust anything?
Companies not upgrading their apps or supporting their users is not something that any app store could possibly fix. There's absolutely nothing "shitty" about any of the apps I mentioned.
There might still be fragments of ice / rocks / whatever that humankind can use to construct an artificial planet of some kind
You've completely missed the point. NASA has a hard-on for searching for signs of life on other planets, and an "Earth" in the next solar system would be a damn near perfect place to find life, or otherwise lend credence to the opposition (that says life is unique to Earth, or at least not the oh-so-common scenario which most contemporary astronomers claim that it is).
If we just wanted to teraform a planet, we could do it closer to home... Mars and Venus for example. But that doesn't get NASA its samples of alien bacteria they're dying to find at this point.
I'm glad there's a thriving Android piracy scene out there. I don't have any problem shelling out money for Android apps, yet I've looked for pirated APKs on a few occasions.
Why would I do this??? After all, they're only $1-5usd, and the overwhelming majority of the apps are free anyhow, so a few paid apps is no big expense (contrast this with IOS, where you've gotta pay for EVERYTHING). Well, there's a few different scenarios at work.
One is device compatibility... I bought Sonic CD just days after it came out, and I was anxiously awaiting Sonic4. I heard people talking about it, but every time I'd go looking for it, there was no such app in the app store. After a few months, I was using the web interface to the app store for some reason, and found it... but it wouldn't allow me to purchase it. A quick search of the web for the apk, and it installed and ran on my device just fine. Once Sega gets their heads out of their asses, I'll buy the legit version, but thanks to pirates, I'm not a second-class citizen, stuck behind the wrong door in the walled-garden.
Compatibility is another. When the sixaxis compatibility checker was spitting out ambiguous messages that weren't in the documentation, I did my own "checking" with the full app to see if buying it would be throwing money down a hole. Thanks pirates!
And finally, there's always the case of a company that screws you over... Number 1 app on my phone is an RSS reader. Eliminates 90% of my "mobile" web browsing, with the painful interface that subjects me to (Slashdot is no exception). I decided to support RSS Demon and bought a copy, hoping that the annoying bugs would be fixed in just a few more releases...
But within a month, they had rearranged their product offerings on the store, and now what I bought doesn't even exist, so I don't get the many, many upgrades that have come along since. And worse, I couldn't reinstall even the version I bought if my life depended on it, since it's no longer in the store, anywhere. e-mails to the developer have gone unanswered. I'll be dammed if I'm going to send them more money to just up and screw me over once again. Since I've already paid in, I don't feel even slightly hesitant to resort to piracy of the product I already bought. Thanks again, pirates!
It'll be a shame if efforts to combat piracy are successful, and cut off semi-legitimate users like myself. Or worse, if it gets pushed underground a bit further, and every APK is packaged with some nasty virus out to steal all your data. AirPush and it's kin are bad enough, as-is, that everyone using Android is going to need Spyware remover and antivirus soon.
The iPod was a great device that had no peer so it got a ton of people on the platform.
The Rio Karma was every bit competitive with the iPod.
What Apple did was advertise. Outside of geekier circles, people didn't know there was a replacement for CDs out there... And when Apple told them, they became synonymous with it. A whole generation of people know MP3 players as iPods, and don't know that there's another name for them.
If there's one small dig ThinkPads have taken with regularity over the years, it's that though there's a ton of quality and substance built into these machines, style was not a hallmark of the brand.
That was long ago, when IBM owned the brand. Lenovo kept the quality up to par for a while, but many people who've bought Thinkpads in the past couple years will attest that the quality isn't the best any longer. That they're going for styling now, just further suggests they're completely changing the brand, and it will no longer stand for quality and durability.
And instead, replaces them with bulky electrical power sources. There's no free lunch
Nuclear power sources can be extremely high power, for relatively little size and weight. Hence, nuclear submarines.
NASA is upgrading RTG to more efficient Stirling radioisotope generators (SRG), and full-fledged nuclear reactors are sometimes used, with an even better power to weight ratio.
I'm afraid to comment on this story, post it to Facebook or to have my political views heard, for fear that it might prevent me from future government jobs, or possibly even from crossing the border.
Yes, most industrialized nations will refuse entry to people suffering from paranoia and other mental illnesses...
I cannot even imagine gigabit at home. What would that be for?
How long does it take you to (rsync) backup your 3TB hard drive across the internet to an off-site server? Be sure to include that overhead for encryption...
Students would come in, and tell us how fast our internet was, and that their 5Mb cable modems were nothing in comparison.. They were shocked to find out that we only had 4Mb. We had a squid transparent proxy box, but the big difference was latency. A very, very low latency, slower connection will 'feel' much faster than a bigger pipe.
Don't forget about the effects of proper queuing... After upgrading from a T-1 to DS-3 line, people were complaining about the horrible performance, and started yelling at management to upgrade to higher speeds, despited quite modest needs. I found that either Cisco's documentation was wrong, or the idiots at Verizon had explicitly disabled the fair-queuing on the router that was supposed to be enabled by default. Turning on that basic feature instantly improved performance across the board, and complaints stopped.
Unfortunately, still no change in my company's policies about contracting-out critical work like this to outside "experts", to save money and get "better results."
Ever since Netflix started streaming HighDef video...?
I'd be happy with 1Mbps internet service at a reasonable cost, but it's slower than the entry-level ($20/mo) cable/DSL service every where I've looked in the past several years. So, yes, that is a bit slow.
500Kbps would be the bare minimum speed I'd accept, since streaming standard definition video (like Hulu / Netflix) at lowest quality would be out of the question below that speed.
Higher speeds only become terribly useful with a shared internet connection. I wouldn't share my 1Mbps internet service, but Verizon's FIOS entry level 15/5Mbps speed service could be shared between a dozen people (eg., modest apartment complex) quite comfortably, and would result in a cost of well-under $5/person.
I know cockroaches and mice can become problematic as they commonly make them homes in nice warm computers with convenient openings, but do people really have a problem with 18th-century mathematician infestations?
Las Vegas is in a desert. They just put some water pipes there and started living there.
Vegas is indeed a desert, but that just means low levels of rainfall... it does NOT mean they don't have an ample supply of water sources. Hell, even Antarctica is a desert, yet it has the worlds largest supply of fresh water (in solid form).
Vegas has an ample source of water. A little thing called Hoover Dam and Lake Meade.
I'd also point out the central (San Joaquin) valley of California is a huge desert, yet it is the bread-basket of the USA, and some of the most productive farm-land. Sometimes, the good soil isn't in the same place as there is an ample supply of water, and artificially bringing the two together has superb results.
Similarly, plowing forests to build cities may put people where the food and water is, but results in a decreased footprint of all those things. Building our cities in deserts like Phoenix, preserves those forests and farms, while still giving people space to live, efficiently.
Slashdot Mirror
That's some great circular logic you got there... of course the status quo is always imminently rational and based on the best information, and unconstrained by fashion or market forces.
<blockquote>
Pointy... maybe. Hot, not so much. We're talking about melting plastic here, and there's no reason you can't have a nice thick cover sheet/topper to completely fix that imaginary issue.
Rated at 500lbs, and have you ever heard of a pressure-relief valve?
Did you have anything to contribute to the discussion other than a baseless "nuh uh!"
This may be slightly off-topic, but hey, this is idle so I'm probably improving the quality of discussion, anyhow...
Why aren't inflatables more popular? A traditional queen size mattress costs at least $200, meanwhile a queen sized air mattress costs $20, or an order of magnitude less expensive. Inflatables aren't perfect, but these days they're quite stable and nearly as comfortable as a regular mattress. What's more, they don't have springs or padding to wear out quickly, as cheaper regular mattresses do.
I've even seen a little $50 love-seat that was inflatable. Considering being able to eliminate the steel frames, springs, cross-beam supports, and all that polyurethane, it should be easy to make them cheaper, and again be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than conventional sofa, chairs, etc.
The benefits of super lightweight, incredibly compact when packed away, and incredibly portable, plus cheap and very little material used, seems like a slam-dunk.
So why don't we see more of this? Whether with recycled sea-plastic, or not. People like to say how incredibly cheap consumers are, yet this seems like an obvious, huge expense saver, that it seems almost nobody takes advantage of. Why not? When did we become furniture snobs?
There is TONS of evidence that it's a problem. It is unambiguous. TFA even directly admits to that fact.
False logic. We are seeing cellphone caused accidents, but that doesn't mean the increase will completely wipe-out all other automotive and road safety improvements that have been ongoing for decades.
Without cell phones, there would likely have been an even sharper decline in accident rates.
Bravo.
The article is worthless...
From TFA:
So, for all it's handwaving, the article says nothing. Talking on a cell phone is dangerous, but cellphone bans haven't resulted in a reduction in crashes, and TFA has NOTHING to say about WHY that is. They talk about certain people being more dangerous drivers, but they DON'T claim that talking on a cell phone is safe, as the /. summary very clearly implies.
When being harassed or threatened by authorities, rule #2 is to make damn sure you NEVER break the most trivial of laws. Rape is right-out... And it's just as easy to believe that Assange is an egocentric ass who did, in-fact commit the crime he's accused of.
Nope. The "compatibility" I mentioned earlier has to do with hardware... whether a given chipset can send the proper signals. It would be simpler with only 7 different sets of hardware, but "simpler" might just mean "doesn't work anywhere, ever, no matter what"... That's pretty simple, isn't it?
Companies not upgrading their apps or supporting their users is not something that any app store could possibly fix. There's absolutely nothing "shitty" about any of the apps I mentioned.
Your attempt to troll has failed miserably.
You plan to have a CONCAVE planet?
No thanks, I had some neutrinos for lunch, and boy did they go right through me!
You've completely missed the point. NASA has a hard-on for searching for signs of life on other planets, and an "Earth" in the next solar system would be a damn near perfect place to find life, or otherwise lend credence to the opposition (that says life is unique to Earth, or at least not the oh-so-common scenario which most contemporary astronomers claim that it is).
If we just wanted to teraform a planet, we could do it closer to home... Mars and Venus for example. But that doesn't get NASA its samples of alien bacteria they're dying to find at this point.
I'm glad there's a thriving Android piracy scene out there. I don't have any problem shelling out money for Android apps, yet I've looked for pirated APKs on a few occasions.
Why would I do this??? After all, they're only $1-5usd, and the overwhelming majority of the apps are free anyhow, so a few paid apps is no big expense (contrast this with IOS, where you've gotta pay for EVERYTHING). Well, there's a few different scenarios at work.
One is device compatibility... I bought Sonic CD just days after it came out, and I was anxiously awaiting Sonic4. I heard people talking about it, but every time I'd go looking for it, there was no such app in the app store. After a few months, I was using the web interface to the app store for some reason, and found it... but it wouldn't allow me to purchase it. A quick search of the web for the apk, and it installed and ran on my device just fine. Once Sega gets their heads out of their asses, I'll buy the legit version, but thanks to pirates, I'm not a second-class citizen, stuck behind the wrong door in the walled-garden.
Compatibility is another. When the sixaxis compatibility checker was spitting out ambiguous messages that weren't in the documentation, I did my own "checking" with the full app to see if buying it would be throwing money down a hole. Thanks pirates!
And finally, there's always the case of a company that screws you over... Number 1 app on my phone is an RSS reader. Eliminates 90% of my "mobile" web browsing, with the painful interface that subjects me to (Slashdot is no exception). I decided to support RSS Demon and bought a copy, hoping that the annoying bugs would be fixed in just a few more releases...
But within a month, they had rearranged their product offerings on the store, and now what I bought doesn't even exist, so I don't get the many, many upgrades that have come along since. And worse, I couldn't reinstall even the version I bought if my life depended on it, since it's no longer in the store, anywhere. e-mails to the developer have gone unanswered. I'll be dammed if I'm going to send them more money to just up and screw me over once again. Since I've already paid in, I don't feel even slightly hesitant to resort to piracy of the product I already bought. Thanks again, pirates!
It'll be a shame if efforts to combat piracy are successful, and cut off semi-legitimate users like myself. Or worse, if it gets pushed underground a bit further, and every APK is packaged with some nasty virus out to steal all your data. AirPush and it's kin are bad enough, as-is, that everyone using Android is going to need Spyware remover and antivirus soon.
You're right... the iPod is UGLY. What is it modeled after, a pack of cigarettes that took-up cross-dressing?
Gah! http://cfile25.uf.tistory.com/image/196275444E8D5D2B228E56
The Karma looks absolutely awesome in comparison: http://cdn.head-fi.org/d/dd/dd7d09c3_rio-karma.jpg
Ethernet doesn't have collisions anymore, either. Hubs are a thing of the past.
The Rio Karma was every bit competitive with the iPod.
What Apple did was advertise. Outside of geekier circles, people didn't know there was a replacement for CDs out there... And when Apple told them, they became synonymous with it. A whole generation of people know MP3 players as iPods, and don't know that there's another name for them.
That was long ago, when IBM owned the brand. Lenovo kept the quality up to par for a while, but many people who've bought Thinkpads in the past couple years will attest that the quality isn't the best any longer. That they're going for styling now, just further suggests they're completely changing the brand, and it will no longer stand for quality and durability.
Okay!
SNAP-10A: Output 30 kW; weight 650 lbs.
That's completely inaccurate.
Nuclear power sources are just about as cheap as solar panels. Much cheaper than hauling up lots of fuel.
Nuclear power sources can be extremely high power, for relatively little size and weight. Hence, nuclear submarines.
NASA is upgrading RTG to more efficient Stirling radioisotope generators (SRG), and full-fledged nuclear reactors are sometimes used, with an even better power to weight ratio.
Yes, most industrialized nations will refuse entry to people suffering from paranoia and other mental illnesses...
And in other news, Alcoa buys this guy's house for $10 million USD.
Doesn't everyone make a habit of unboxing their new TVs in public, often in-front of a police station? Maybe it's just me and Ahnold?
How long does it take you to (rsync) backup your 3TB hard drive across the internet to an off-site server? Be sure to include that overhead for encryption...
Don't forget about the effects of proper queuing... After upgrading from a T-1 to DS-3 line, people were complaining about the horrible performance, and started yelling at management to upgrade to higher speeds, despited quite modest needs. I found that either Cisco's documentation was wrong, or the idiots at Verizon had explicitly disabled the fair-queuing on the router that was supposed to be enabled by default. Turning on that basic feature instantly improved performance across the board, and complaints stopped.
Unfortunately, still no change in my company's policies about contracting-out critical work like this to outside "experts", to save money and get "better results."
Ever since Netflix started streaming HighDef video...?
I'd be happy with 1Mbps internet service at a reasonable cost, but it's slower than the entry-level ($20/mo) cable/DSL service every where I've looked in the past several years. So, yes, that is a bit slow.
500Kbps would be the bare minimum speed I'd accept, since streaming standard definition video (like Hulu / Netflix) at lowest quality would be out of the question below that speed.
Higher speeds only become terribly useful with a shared internet connection. I wouldn't share my 1Mbps internet service, but Verizon's FIOS entry level 15/5Mbps speed service could be shared between a dozen people (eg., modest apartment complex) quite comfortably, and would result in a cost of well-under $5/person.
I know cockroaches and mice can become problematic as they commonly make them homes in nice warm computers with convenient openings, but do people really have a problem with 18th-century mathematician infestations?
Vegas is indeed a desert, but that just means low levels of rainfall... it does NOT mean they don't have an ample supply of water sources. Hell, even Antarctica is a desert, yet it has the worlds largest supply of fresh water (in solid form).
Vegas has an ample source of water. A little thing called Hoover Dam and Lake Meade.
I'd also point out the central (San Joaquin) valley of California is a huge desert, yet it is the bread-basket of the USA, and some of the most productive farm-land. Sometimes, the good soil isn't in the same place as there is an ample supply of water, and artificially bringing the two together has superb results.
Similarly, plowing forests to build cities may put people where the food and water is, but results in a decreased footprint of all those things. Building our cities in deserts like Phoenix, preserves those forests and farms, while still giving people space to live, efficiently.