This story isn't interesting because someone launched a larger-than-usual amateur rocket that had to abort.
The story is that this is a volunteer, part-time team working towards manned flight, and are accomplishing some impressive things along the way on a teeny budget. I'd think something about that should've been in the summary, no? Or am I the only one that didn't recognize the project offhand?
Huh. I thought the acting in SGU was head-and-shoulders above the other Stargate series (which I also loved). To put it bluntly, the show just moved way too slow for me. It felt more like a Battlestar Galactica without any Cylons.
It did pick up the pace a little bit later on, but maybe it was too little, too late.
Buffalo Grove, IL (used to live there) is split in two different counties (Lake and Cook) which have different tax rates.
Yeah I know BG is like that (work in bg now), and it seems to make sense that it's split by counties. What always confused me were that there'd be two cook county rates I used to get updates for. I think there was a split somewhere near Devon, which might actually be the Du Page line, but some businesses still paid cook.
I'm not sure I could figure out how to get it all right for the chicagoland area, much less all around the country.
it's absolutely great to pull up, stuff a 20 out the window, and get your gas pumped, easy cheezy.
$20?! You must be driving one o' them newfangled, half battery cars. Or is that what you tip the attendant?:)
I always thought it would be cool to have the option when it's awful out. I guess it's not practical to make it optional though because I haven't seen a full service station since I was about 10 years old, in another state.
You're right of course, when comparing it to, say, a proper tech company campus. Though at "Facebook scale", their centers might have quite a bit of HVAC and electrical work... beyond the build-outs. At least a lot for a town of only 10,000.
Plus with other places coming in too, it'll be something of a tax revenue generator. Play their cards right with those dollars and they might be able to turn it into a place worth living. Then the sky is the limit. I seem to remember a similar story about some depressed former mining town or something in the midwest that ended up reinventing itself as a mini tech mecca.
The real joke is that all these readers have the same battery life... "crazy long time". We have a kindle and nook (the b&w+bottom color one). They both last forever between charges.
You might be right about the ham stuff. I only echo the sentiment around the table at the local hackerspace. Guys there are very, "I think that would be awesome, I never did it". Either way, I'm sure they could do some real research on that to be sure.
As for the Arduino thing, they've never been more popular, they're extremely easy to play with and the barrier to entry is ridiculously low. That's the biggest win you'll find if you're trying to attract anyone tinkering with electronics.
If they're sincere about changing their image, they really do need to ditch the Radio Shack name. I know they were considering rebranding as, "The Shack" in some places, but I haven't seen a store adopt it yet. Maybe license "Maker Shack" or something. I dunno, just do anything you can to get away from the name with 2+ decades of bad history attached to it.
So change the name, throw out all the shitty RC cars and other trash nobody is buying, stock Uno's, Picaxe and Parallax Stamps, shields, sensors, modules, appropriate serial and usb cables, some etching crap and hire just one guy or girl for each store that's a tinkerer, even if they're only there in the evenings part-time. Put some decent tools on the shelf (the $35 Weller iron station, lose the rat shack house burner), 3 or 4 multimeters we've actually seen elsewhere, a rotary tool (Dremmel or similar), a few shelves of books on a variety of most popular subjects. Stock ham radio gear and learning materials. Put a netbook or two on the shelf somewhere (they might already do this). All that could fit in the back 1/2 of most rat shacks I've been in, and they can still keep an area for their lucrative mobile phone business up front if they absolutely have to.
Follow it up with a library of basic how-to information on your site that isn't completely covered in ads and awful branding. Do not require logins (you hear me instructables?). Do not spam or sell. Make useful videos. If you want to get silly, start doing basic electronics courses during your dead hours (every retail space has em). Donate stuff or manpower to your local hackerspace.
That should be a pretty good start on a whole new business. Modify from there!
Exactly right. Microsoft needs a top-down overhaul.
To be fair, you know they have truckloads of talent there. The question is why the cool tech they create never materializes on the market. It's because cool, innovative stuff is inherently unproven and risky. It seems obvious to me that the management there quash all the good stuff in favor of the way-too-safe stuff, figuring they can just throw money at a mediocre product to get traction. That kind of environment is what keeps you from seeing monster successes, and a direct result of the company's leadership.
Change the leadership to one that allows cool, innovative stuff to see store shelves, and you'll see big successes. And as an excellent bonus to consumers, they could (in theory) worry less about litigation and shady business practices if they can stand tall on the merits of excellent product. Maybe.
I'm not much of a fanboy for any particular company, but...
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented
I'd say they're very good at improving things that somebody else already invented. And I think this describes most all examples of innovation that we'd ever think of. Taking an ok idea and turning into a really good product with considerable software and hw overhauls involves serious thought and innovation.
I mean, Sandisk and the like didn't invent the mp3 player either, but Apple was the first one to really hit it out of the park. Some considerable changes happened there to make a blockbuster device. Same goes with tablets. They didn't invent them, and neither did most tablet makers before them, but they hit it out of the park.
And none of this means someone else won't do a better job than they did (some arguably have already, in some ways). Just that those devices were innovative.
The little I've heard from TSA agents (the ones doing the pat downs) makes it sound like they think it's stupid too. It's the old, "I hate it, but I'm just doing my job." line.
Accurate or not, it gives me the impression that these measures are just more, "See! I'm doing something!" crap from the more politically minded higher-ups.
IIRC, Inkscape had a nice raster to vector function that I had good luck with. I seem to remember it allowed for a bit of tweaking too, to achieve best results.
Do you buy your used books on Amazon or somewhere else? I've bought a few used books on there, but it seems like I usually end up paying twice (or more) the cost of the book in shipping.
When I watch parents, friends and people at work use a browser, they hardly ever use the location bar. The only things they do really use are the back button and bookmarks. Most people do go to the same handful of sites all the time anyways.
If there were an easy way to keep that functionality and optionally auto-hide the location bar, I think that would be useful. Especially with laptop display geometry, a lot of us would get more utility reclaiming the space and hiding the unused browser junk.
Slashdot Mirror
This story isn't interesting because someone launched a larger-than-usual amateur rocket that had to abort.
The story is that this is a volunteer, part-time team working towards manned flight, and are accomplishing some impressive things along the way on a teeny budget. I'd think something about that should've been in the summary, no? Or am I the only one that didn't recognize the project offhand?
Eh, the drone thing was a little weak. They were a faceless, kinda-sorta enemy.
:)
Cylons were awesome.
Huh. I thought the acting in SGU was head-and-shoulders above the other Stargate series (which I also loved). To put it bluntly, the show just moved way too slow for me. It felt more like a Battlestar Galactica without any Cylons.
It did pick up the pace a little bit later on, but maybe it was too little, too late.
Buffalo Grove, IL (used to live there) is split in two different counties (Lake and Cook) which have different tax rates. Yeah I know BG is like that (work in bg now), and it seems to make sense that it's split by counties. What always confused me were that there'd be two cook county rates I used to get updates for. I think there was a split somewhere near Devon, which might actually be the Du Page line, but some businesses still paid cook.
I'm not sure I could figure out how to get it all right for the chicagoland area, much less all around the country.
This comment needed to appear in the summary. It would have prevented a lot of wasted armchair lawyer time.
it's absolutely great to pull up, stuff a 20 out the window, and get your gas pumped, easy cheezy.
$20?! You must be driving one o' them newfangled, half battery cars. Or is that what you tip the attendant? :)
I always thought it would be cool to have the option when it's awful out. I guess it's not practical to make it optional though because I haven't seen a full service station since I was about 10 years old, in another state.
You're right of course, when comparing it to, say, a proper tech company campus. Though at "Facebook scale", their centers might have quite a bit of HVAC and electrical work... beyond the build-outs. At least a lot for a town of only 10,000.
Plus with other places coming in too, it'll be something of a tax revenue generator. Play their cards right with those dollars and they might be able to turn it into a place worth living. Then the sky is the limit. I seem to remember a similar story about some depressed former mining town or something in the midwest that ended up reinventing itself as a mini tech mecca.
The real joke is that all these readers have the same battery life... "crazy long time". We have a kindle and nook (the b&w+bottom color one). They both last forever between charges.
What's weird is that we're all here saying the same thing, "They won't, but how cool would that be?"
If they don't, I hope someone else does. The closest things I've got are Fry's and an American Science & Surplus. Both of which are pretty far.
You might be right about the ham stuff. I only echo the sentiment around the table at the local hackerspace. Guys there are very, "I think that would be awesome, I never did it". Either way, I'm sure they could do some real research on that to be sure.
As for the Arduino thing, they've never been more popular, they're extremely easy to play with and the barrier to entry is ridiculously low. That's the biggest win you'll find if you're trying to attract anyone tinkering with electronics.
I'm sure that was supposed to be "Dip Shunt".
If they're sincere about changing their image, they really do need to ditch the Radio Shack name. I know they were considering rebranding as, "The Shack" in some places, but I haven't seen a store adopt it yet. Maybe license "Maker Shack" or something. I dunno, just do anything you can to get away from the name with 2+ decades of bad history attached to it.
So change the name, throw out all the shitty RC cars and other trash nobody is buying, stock Uno's, Picaxe and Parallax Stamps, shields, sensors, modules, appropriate serial and usb cables, some etching crap and hire just one guy or girl for each store that's a tinkerer, even if they're only there in the evenings part-time. Put some decent tools on the shelf (the $35 Weller iron station, lose the rat shack house burner), 3 or 4 multimeters we've actually seen elsewhere, a rotary tool (Dremmel or similar), a few shelves of books on a variety of most popular subjects. Stock ham radio gear and learning materials. Put a netbook or two on the shelf somewhere (they might already do this). All that could fit in the back 1/2 of most rat shacks I've been in, and they can still keep an area for their lucrative mobile phone business up front if they absolutely have to.
Follow it up with a library of basic how-to information on your site that isn't completely covered in ads and awful branding. Do not require logins (you hear me instructables?). Do not spam or sell. Make useful videos. If you want to get silly, start doing basic electronics courses during your dead hours (every retail space has em). Donate stuff or manpower to your local hackerspace.
That should be a pretty good start on a whole new business. Modify from there!
Exactly right. Microsoft needs a top-down overhaul.
To be fair, you know they have truckloads of talent there. The question is why the cool tech they create never materializes on the market. It's because cool, innovative stuff is inherently unproven and risky. It seems obvious to me that the management there quash all the good stuff in favor of the way-too-safe stuff, figuring they can just throw money at a mediocre product to get traction. That kind of environment is what keeps you from seeing monster successes, and a direct result of the company's leadership.
Change the leadership to one that allows cool, innovative stuff to see store shelves, and you'll see big successes. And as an excellent bonus to consumers, they could (in theory) worry less about litigation and shady business practices if they can stand tall on the merits of excellent product. Maybe.
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented
I'd say they're very good at improving things that somebody else already invented. And I think this describes most all examples of innovation that we'd ever think of. Taking an ok idea and turning into a really good product with considerable software and hw overhauls involves serious thought and innovation.
I mean, Sandisk and the like didn't invent the mp3 player either, but Apple was the first one to really hit it out of the park. Some considerable changes happened there to make a blockbuster device. Same goes with tablets. They didn't invent them, and neither did most tablet makers before them, but they hit it out of the park.
And none of this means someone else won't do a better job than they did (some arguably have already, in some ways). Just that those devices were innovative.
The little I've heard from TSA agents (the ones doing the pat downs) makes it sound like they think it's stupid too. It's the old, "I hate it, but I'm just doing my job." line.
Accurate or not, it gives me the impression that these measures are just more, "See! I'm doing something!" crap from the more politically minded higher-ups.
Well the inability to perform a chargeback of any kind is interesting. It certainly changes the dynamic of long distance transactions.
IIRC, Inkscape had a nice raster to vector function that I had good luck with. I seem to remember it allowed for a bit of tweaking too, to achieve best results.
Don't say that... I was just looking at doing this, assuming I can put together the 8k with a little coin from the local college. :(
If it's just to see if the thing is working, I've heard a lantern mantle works. Also old radium watches. I'm sure someone can confirm or deny.
It'd be funnier if it weren't true. :/
Streisand effect.
:)
That is all.
I think it probably is a pretty popular opinion here. The only complication is in calling it "Mac App store" instead of "official repos". ;)
Games like Minecraft doing so well just hammers that point home.
:)
Or in big company speak, "Make a Portal, not another CoD. It works out best for everyone."?
Do you buy your used books on Amazon or somewhere else? I've bought a few used books on there, but it seems like I usually end up paying twice (or more) the cost of the book in shipping.
Though I do usually prefer a paper copy.
When I watch parents, friends and people at work use a browser, they hardly ever use the location bar. The only things they do really use are the back button and bookmarks. Most people do go to the same handful of sites all the time anyways.
;)
If there were an easy way to keep that functionality and optionally auto-hide the location bar, I think that would be useful. Especially with laptop display geometry, a lot of us would get more utility reclaiming the space and hiding the unused browser junk.
And no, I was not a huge fan of the ribbon.